masey » Technology

Path – The smart social journal

masey — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:11:19 +0000

With today’s news that my sentimental favourite social-check-in-come-travel-companion application, Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook, it seems like there’s no better time than the present to take a quick look at the worthy replacement app that all the UI team were going goo-gaa over in the office this week – “Path”.

After all, only moments after Path released its beautifully revamped “v2.0″ app into the marketplace on both iOS and Android, respected tech blog “The Next Web” was already touting the improved application as “…the Facebook app that Facebook should have made.”

So what makes Path such a sexy and fun experience for the everyday user? The simple answer to that, as cliched as it sounds, is that it’s the “little things”.

Hopefully you’ll get a bit of an idea of what I’m talking about in the few screens and features I’ll take you through below, but minute, yet noticeable details like the clock icon timeline scrollbar, the paralex scrolling user cover photos and the arc of sharing options that pop out from the prominently displayed share “plus” icon, all combine to provide users with an intelligent, fun and easy-to-use way of sharing details of their daily happenings with friends.

Sure, the user-base at this stage is, like all other relatively new players going up against the likes of Facebook etc, kind of pathetic, but it may only take a few influential users to get the ball rolling within their social online circles to get the buzz and momentum going for Path.

Getting started: Signing up

Signing up for a Path account is an interesting process in that it flips the traditional process by asking for you to select your profile and cover photos first before any kind of email/password combination and demographic info. This way, users get a sweet mini-preview of the beautiful design style that awaits them on the other side of the registration process.

Providing a few more required (and optional) details, you’re transferred to your brand new home stream already featuring the imagery you selected upon signing up. The best way to fill up your rather sparse timeline? Find some friends to add!

Adding Friends

A pretty straight forward process this one.

There’s the usual option of connecting with your Facebook account and finding fellow Path users that way, then there’s the simple option of running through your own personal address book, matching up listed email addresses with registered Path users.

Using either method, or both, should hopefully connect you to at least one or two friends you can start interacting with.

If not, there’s always the option of sending out pre-formatted invitations to your nearest and dearest via a few clicks and access to your phone’s address book. Selecting the phone number or email address of your invitee determines if they will receive their message by SMS or email. Simple.

Creating a “moment”

Gowalla referred to a user’s status update that included text, location data and images as a “story”. For Path users, your updates containing combinations of images, text, tagging of other Path users, location check-ins and even music sharing are referred to as “moments”.

To start composing a “moment” simply click on the red “+” icon at the bottom left of the screen on your home stream and select a media type to submit. From there it’s just a matter of following the prompts to complete and submit your “moment”. Some of the cool things to look out for are:

A number of image filters are available for when taking pictures with the camera. Unlike Instagram where the filters are applied post-shot, however, the filters in Path are shown in real-time as you actually take the shot. Pretty cool.
If you wish to let everyone know about a cool song you are actually listening to as you create a moment, Path will find out what song is playing and automatically suggest that song as the one to publish. No searching required.
You can even, if you’re so inclined, let people know you’ve called it a night by clicking on the moon icon and selecting “Go to sleep”. When you wake again in the morning, hit the wake button and Path will greet you with a weather and temperature update in your timeline. Kind of gimmicky, but cool at the same time.

Commenting and liking

Like any decent social application, you have the opportunity to add comments, likes and in a quirky new move “emotions” to your friends’ posts. That’s right, leave a comment, a heart (like) or a smile to posts that appear on your home stream.

To add comments and likes, look for the grey smilie face at the top right of each post. Just so you know, too, the little number next to the smilie is the total number of people who have viewed that “moment”. A neat little running viewing stat!

Posting to your other networks

The obvious question some of your friends may ask you as you attempt to enlist them to your newfound love of Path, is – “why join if it means I have to post updates to yet another network??” The answer to this one is, you don’t have to!

By connecting your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare accounts to your Path profile, you can easily and automatically post your “moments” to any or all of these accounts each time you post something to Path.

In a clever, similar fashion to the popular photo sharing site Instagram, each time you post new content, an individual, specific webpage is created for that post so that your friends from other networks can click through to view your individual, shared Path content without requiring an account. The stylish “moment” pages look something like this:

As I sit here typing this, my mate Adam just posted a sweet time lapse video he shot using his phone and posted to his Path profile as well as Facebook and Twitter. Check it out here.

Other streams to keep your eyes on

Your home stream isn’t the only place in Path that you can keep an eye on what’s going on. Access your settings menu by either swiping your home stream screen to the right, or by clicking on the 3-bar icon at the top left of screen. From this menu you can access a number of other options:

Home – The main Path stream you’ll keep your eye on for 90% of the time and a timeline of your friends’ moments.
Path – Think of this as your profile and a running timeline of your moments.
Activity – A running list of what activity has been going on surrounding posts by you and your friends. You can even find out WHEN your friends have visited your path from here.
Settings – Change your personal details, profile and cover photos, and set your notification settings.
Sign Out – If you must, you must.

How’s all that sound?

While hopefully I’ve given you enough of a taster above to get you hooked, nothing beats giving it a go for yourself. It may sound like I’m really “pumping the tyres” of this wee app, but honestly, I’ve given a bunch of these types of things a go over the past couple of years, and this is the most fun I’ve had with one of them combined with a truly beautiful and well thought out user interface.

To get your hands on Path now, visit http://www.path.com.

2011 Rugby World Cup iPhone Wallpaper

masey — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:40:29 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, prior to the Australian Wallabies stunning Tri-Nations win over the mighty New Zealand All Blacks in Brisbane, I posted a selection of Wallabies iPhone wallpapers to my blog. Since then collectively the designs have been downloaded and presumably installed onto the screens of over 500 iPhones.

With all that Wallaby love and support gathering speed as we rapidly approach the start of the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, it seems our cousins across the pond (New Zealand) and their supporters around the world are feeling a little left out and on a number of occasions on Twitter I’ve been asked to throw together a few designs for the All Blacks.

A comment left on my Wallabies designs page yesterday by Chris “@priceyruns” Price was, I guess, the last push I needed and… voila the following are now available for download.

While I only have the Tri-Nations teams covered so far, if you’d like designs done for any of the other teams in the tournament, leave me a message in the comments section below and I’ll see what I can do for you.

GO WALLABIES!!!

Wallabies iPhone Wallpaper

masey — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:45:35 +0000

With less than 2 weeks left before the 2011 Rugby World Cup kicks off across New Zealand, Rugby fans throughout the Southern Hemisphere are tonight turning their focus to the 2011 Tri-Nations Series final between the Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All-Blacks being played at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium.

UPDATE!
Get your hands on wallpapers for a select number of other World Cup Rugby teams including the All Black and Springboks here.

Despite the foul weather forecasted, I, for one, will be in the stands tonight for the game and I’m hoping for a result that will both clinch the Tri-Nations title for the Wallabies, and also put the All-Blacks on notice that they are going to have a fight on their hands for the RWC in October!

You can start showing your support of the Wallabies right now by grabbing one of the following iPhone Wallpapers I put together this morning! Share this page with your friends and fellow Wallabies supporters, and I’ll see you tonight at the game!

GO WALLABIES!!

10 Tips for Google Plus Newbies

masey — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 02:41:10 +0000

With more and more people finding their way into the Google Plus network overnight as the invite flood gates were opened yet again, “circles” and “sparks” are now being set up in earnest and people’s “streams” are starting to flow with targeted content.

As a Google Plus newbie, you’ve just set up your profile with any number of fantabulous facts and witty one-liners, but where to from here?

There’s all sorts of reviews appearing coming from bloggers and journalists who have had the best part of the last week to get their hands dirty on the inside. These articles give you a good run down on what “Plus” is all about, but how about some good practical tips?

Here’s my selection of ten or so cracking good tips to get you started:

1. Get your profile privacy settings all sorted.

I wrote a blog post on this very subject earlier this week and I think it’s one that everyone will want to check out early on.

2. Send private, or “direct” messages

There’s no specific feature built into Google Plus to allow you to send what we Tweeters know as “Direct Messages”. Sending private messages to on specific person, however, is dead simple to do.

All you need to do is start creating a post in your stream and make sure that the name of the only person you want to receive the message is listed where you would normally specify “Public” or specific “circle” recipients.

3. Secure your Google Plus short URL

Rip along to http://gplus.to and fill out a couple of details to secure your very own Google Plus short URL. Basically, you’ll be able to turn this:

https://plus.google.com/100159643379877461280/ into something more like this:
http://gplus.to/masey

4. Create an “Instapaper” style “Read Later” circle

We all have articles and web pages we come across during the day that we’d love to sit and read but don’t have the time when they cross our paths. Specific bookmarking services launched to help with this problem, like the popular “Instapaper” can now be effectively replicated in Google Plus simply by setting up a “Read Later” circle which you add ONLY YOURSELF to.

Next time you come across a page you’d like to look at later, share it with your “Read Later” circle, then check out your “Read Later” stream later on when it’s more convenient.

Cheers to @rwashton for pointing this one out for me.

5. Learn Google’s text formatting shortcuts

Add some personality and visual appeal to your posts by adding simple formatting elements like bolding, italics etc. By using some simple text shortcuts this ends up being super easy to do:

_italic text_ ➜ italic text
*bold text* ➜ bold text
-strikethrough text- ➜ ~~strikethrough text~~
Combined _*italic bold*_ ➜ italic bold text
**cough** ➜ *cough*

Note: This does not work in instances like [-strikethrough-] {*bold*} (_italic_)

6. Prevent commenting on a post

For whatever reason you want to post a link to a page and don’t want anyone to be able to comment on the post? No problem. Complete the post and submit it to your chosen “circles”.

As soon as you do, you’ll notice a small triangle pointing down inside a circle at the top right of the post. Click it and select “Disable Comments”.

You can also edit and delete the post from here, as well as prevent sharing.

7. Work out exactly who a stream post has been shared with

Scenario: You’ve just noticed a funny post appear in your stream that you’d love to make a comment on. Your comment will be hilarious and witty to those who “were there and would understand”, but may be construed as possibly a little offensive by anybody else. How do you know who your comment is going to be seen by before you make a potential mistake?

At the top of each post to the right of the time stamp you’ll notice the word “Public” or “Limited”. If the word “Public” is listed, then the post can be seen by ALL of the Web and, in turn, so would anything you leave as a comment.

If the word “Limited” is listed, usually this means you are part of a circle(s) that the content has been shared with. If you click on the word “Limited”, you’ll get a pop-up featuring thumbnail profile pics of who can see the post and, in turn, who will be able to see your comment.

8. Use the space bar to help navigate your streams

This is definitely one of my favourites. All you need to do to scroll through a stream page by page, is just hit the space bar. Simple and a nice little usability touch.

9. Get to know your colours

This one is a simple tip that some of you may have already worked out, but for others it’s a good one to learn as it may help prevent you from making a mistake somewhere along the line.

When your posts are designated as “Public” (represented by a green button) before you submit them, it means anyone out there on the Interwebs will be able to see what you post, even if you don’t have them added to any of your circles.

If you only intend to share your post with certain “circles” or individuals, their labels will be blue.

Therefore, remember these simple colour codes:

GREEN = PUBLIC
BLUE = LIMITED

10. Mention (or tag) friends in your posts

In a similar way to the way you can “mention” (or tag) specific people in Facebook posts, you can “mention” people who are in any of your “circles” in Google Plus posts by adding the “@” or “+” symbols before their names.

For example, “+John Smith shared this with me and I wanted to share it with you all.”

As soon as you hit the “+” or “@” keys and start typing a name, a nifty auto-select list should appear to help you out.

Don’t forget to “+1″ this post for me and make sure you share this with all your Google Plus newbie pals!

UPDATE: Why use Google+?

It seems one of the early struggles for everyone so far has been trying to convince Facebook fanatics why they should even flirt with Google+. I found this comment left in a discussion thread the other day by a “Chris Withers”. It pretty much sums up, and nails the “allure” (to use his words) of the “new kid on the block.”

I think it does everything Facebook does, but with enough borrowed from Twitter to keep things interesting.

I don’t use Facebook much, because a very high percentage of the people I follow on there have nothing interesting to say. They might be family, or good friends offline, but throw them into social media and suddenly they’re gibbering idiots. Twitter, on the other hand, is all about what interests me. I know very few people on Twitter personally (the occasional tweetup aside), but I check it religiously because I’ve selected people to follow that constantly interest me. The flaw with Twitter is that you can’t please everybody. Someone might follow me on a Canucks game day and then unfollow me when I start RTing dirty jokes the next day.

Now there’s G+. Once it opens up I’ll be able to add friends and family, Canucks bloggers, Whitecaps fans, tech enthusiasts, atheists: people from all the circles who interest me. I won’t need to worry about boring people, because I won’t be spamming my family with hockey or soccer tweets on game day, I don’t need to worry about my 10 year old cousin seeing inappropriate jokes, and I won’t be sending pics of Sunday dinner out to non-family members.

It’s similar to Facebook, and similar to Twitter, but I can keep things segregated. That’s the allure I see.

Queensland Reds iPhone Wallpaper

masey — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:12:03 +0000

Just in case you need reminding, last night’s historical 6th straight State of Origin Series win by the mighty QLD Maroons over the hapless NSW Blues isn’t necessarily the biggest game of football we’ll see at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium this week.

On Saturday night my mate Bec and I, along with about 52,498 other fans will descend upon “The Cauldron” to watch the Queensland Reds go head-to-head with New Zealand’s Canterbury Crusaders in the 2011 SuperRugby Grand Final. The Reds, who have had a fantastic year finishing top of the competition ladder and therefore securing the home final, will have their work cut out for them after having only pipped the Crusaders by 1 point (17-16) when the two teams last met at Suncorp back in Round 15.

Personally, after only just scraping in with picking up tickets on Wednesday morning, I can’t wait for the clash. I think Reds games are some of the best valued and entertaining games you can get along to in Queensland sport.

To start showing your support before the weekend, however, why not grab one of the following iPhone Wallpapers I put together and paint your phone screens RED! Share this page with your friends and fellow Reds supporters, and I’ll see you all on Saturday night!

WE ARE RED!!

Win an HP Pavilion dm1 Notebook – The Ultimate Travel Companion

masey — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:03:27 +0000

If, like me, you’ve spent countless hours sitting at antiquated, faulty desktop computers in tiny, dungeon like, hole-in-the-wall Internet cafes around the world while attempting to tap out emails, then you too will no doubt have experienced the frustration that comes with trying to connect online with family and friends while on the road.

Take heart. More and more Wi-fi connections are popping up all over the place on the global backpacker trail, and I’m about to give you the chance to win the ultimate travel companion which will enable you to easily connect where you want, when you want.

The awesome people at HP are giving away to one lucky Aussie Masey.com.au reader, the HP Pavilion dm1 notebook!

WE HAVE A WINNER!!

Congratulations to Lisa Pentony for your creative, winning entry:

Never whines or wastes time,
Sophisticated, simply sublime!
Ever dependable, reliable,
My adoration’s undeniable!
Sleek, Chic, innovative, unique,
HP Pavilion’s the travel companion I seek!

Thanks to everyone for entering!

Valued at $699, this slim-lined and ultraportable notebook weighs in from only 1.57kg and is the perfect tool for checking flight times, uploading latest holiday photos or blogging about your latest adventure.

The dm1 is equipped to handle anything on the go, running on AMD Dual-Core Processor E-350 with AMD Radeon™ HD Graphics. With an 11.6 inch display, VISION technology from AMD enhances what you see, share and create.

For travelling enthusiasts, the HP Pavilion dm1 delivers performance in the perfect small package.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?!?!

HOW TO ENTER

For your chance to win an HP Pavilion dm1 notebook, tell me in 25 words or less, what or who would be your ultimate travel companion?

Submit your answer in the Facebook, or Blog comment sections below. Whoever I judge as providing the most impressive answer will become the lucky owner of a new HP Pavilion dm1 notebook. Awesome!

The contest closes 5pm (AEST), 30th June, 2011 and is open to Australian residents only.

HP Australia is providing one HP Pavilion dm1 notebook to one lucky winner. The HP Pavilion dm1 notebook prize will be sent directly to the winner after I announce the winning entry on Monday, 4th July, 2011.

Follow me on both Twitter & Facebook to make sure you’re the first to find out if you have won.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS

Tell your friends about this fantastic contest. Copy and paste the following tweet:

For your chance to win an #HP Pavilion dm1 notebook, tell @masey what or who would be your ultimate travel companion? http://j.mp/kIjBhV

You can also go nuts clicking any of the buttons over there on the right!

FOLLOW HP!

Find out more about HP Australia’s awesome range of products by following them on Twitter and Facebook, or by visiting them at www.hp.com.au.

QLD Maroons State of Origin iPhone Wallpaper

masey — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 08:17:11 +0000

It’s one of the biggest sporting events on the Aussie calendar and Queensland are, and have been, the most dominent team for over half a decade now, so why not support your team as they head into tomorrow night’s clash with these brand new iPhone Wallpapers!

The two designs below are super hi-res to make those iPhone 4 retina screens dazzle, so pick your favourite, upload it to your phone and away you go!

QUEENSLANDER!!!!!!!

Tweetbot – A Quick Look

masey — Thu, 12 May 2011 06:52:00 +0000

If you’re at all a fan of Twitter and you’re an iPhone/iPod Touch user, then you need to get comfortable and take in the following quick look at the newest kid on the block as far as Twitter applications go – Tweetbot.

Tweetbot was released a couple of weeks ago by “Tapbots”, the makers of four other great iPhone titles including the awesome “Calcbot”.

So why is it so good and why have I ditched every other Twitter client for the iPhone that I’ve ever tried for this? Well the answer is simple. Attention to detail. Both significant and small details, from the stunning interface to the subtle, yet intelligent sound effects and animations, are bang on.

Every detail, from multiple account handling to incredibly intuitive navigation and a wealth of customisation and add-on options, combine to create a complete, unbeatable Twitter experience that I KNOW you’ll love once you try it.

Here’s just a few of the great features on offer:

COMPOSING	NAVIGATION	TIMELINE
Drafts Auto URL Shortening Current Locations & Points of Interest Photo/Video Uploads Post from Another Account	Timeline Mentions Direct Messages Favorites Retweets Lists Search (Tweets and People)	Multiple Timelines Intuitive Navigation Gestures Quick Access to Common Actions New Tweets Notification Bar
SERVICES
URL Shortening via bit.ly, CloudApp, goo.gl, is.gd, j.mp, Linkyy, l.pr, TinyURL Upload Images via img.ly, Mobypicture, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, yfrog Upload Videos via Mobypicture, TwitVid, yfrog Read Later via Instapaper, Read it Later Translate Tweets Push Notifications via Boxcar

For a paltry AUD$2.49 and a few simple account set-up steps (see below), you too can be up and running with Tweetbot and start experiencing Twitter on your iPhone the way it was always meant to be.

Getting Started

Dead simple. Once you have the application installed on your iPhone or iPod Touch, crank it open and you’ll be presented with a screen that will prompt you to add your Twitter account(s). Simply login as instructed and you’ll be off and running.

After a quick loading screen (which looks beautiful in itself) you’ll be taken straight to your current timeline. To update/refresh your timeline at any stage, simply scroll to the top of your timeline to the most recent tweet, put your finger anywhere on the timeline and pull downwards and you’ll see a “loading” bar appear.

Reading the Timeline

The tweets in your timeline are subtly, yet cleverly colour coded to indicate different kinds of tweets. Light grey for your ordinary tweets by people you follow, dark grey for your tweets, and light blue for tweets you have been mentioned in.

One of the cool features of Tweetbot is the ability to view conversation threads by sliding with your finger, any tweet to the right (see below left). This will momentarily bring up a loading graphic while the conversation is compiled and eventually presented (see below right).

Profiles

By clicking on user icons on the timeline, you will be taken through to user profiles where you can view their tweet archive, followers, who they are following and more. By tapping the cog icon you can easily follow/unfollow the user who’s profile you are viewing, and add them to lists. Very intuitive.

Mentions & DMs

At the bottom of the timeline, next to the speech bubble icon, you’ll notice icons for mentions (@) and messages (DMs). If, upon any timeline refresh, any of these icons are highlighted by a thin blue bar at the bottom of the screen under the respective icon, you’ll know that you have received a new mention and/or message – a simple and beautiful detail that you’ll come to love.

Search & Settings

Searches are simple and you have the option to save specific searches for easy access later. On the search page, you’ll also be able to peruse a list of trending topics.

You can access the application settings screen by clicking on the double head icon on the top left of the timeline screen. Doing this will take you to your account screen where you’ll find a “Settings” button at the bottom of screen (see the first screen grab after the heading “Getting Started” above).

Once in the application settings panel, you can modify any of the options shown below right. By clicking the account name button under the subheading “Account Settings” you will get access to a number of settings specific to each of your Twitter accounts. Things like URL shortening, image, video and read later services may be selected here.

The Negatives

If I have to level any kind of criticism at this masterful Twitter application, it’s that there is a complete lack of integration with other social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

Other applications like the very handy “Hootsuite” allow you to do this in a seamless manner, which means you can update your status across a number of networks via your Tweets.

Further, there’s no functionality for scheduling tweets. For me this is kind of important as I often schedule tweets to ensure maximum impact in North America which is obviously in a completely different timezone to Australia.

That being said, Tweetbot is so perfect in every other way that I’m happy to designate it as my primary Twitter app for now, and hope that perhaps in future updates, these other features may be introduced.

BONUS: Push Notifications with “Boxcar”

Push notifications on your iPhone/iPod Touch are usually pretty handy when it comes to a service like Twitter. Tweetbot doesn’t actually come with this functionality built in, but it’s easily achieved using a standout push notification application called “Boxcar”.

Simply download and install the free Boxcar application on your iPhone or iPod Touch, open it up and tap on the “Twitter Account” button to login with your Twitter account details.

Presented with a push notification/messages settings screen you can now elect to receive push notifications every time you are mentioned, have one of your tweets re-tweeted, receive a direct message, are added to a list, receive new followers and more. Select a unique alert noise for your notifications (there’s a cool bird tweet one available especially for Twitter), save your settings and you’re all set.

Test things out by sending a direct message to one of your friends who you know will send you one straight back. If you’re happy with how it’s all functioning, proceed with adding all sorts of other accounts like Facebook, Gowalla, RSS, Email and more.

Twitter Archiving & Search with Tweet Nest

masey — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:20:55 +0000

On a number of occasions since I started the whole “tweeting” thing, I’ve been asked questions like, “…and what was that link you found and tweeted a few weeks ago?”. The reality is that without being gifted an elephant-like memory, I’ve struggled to answer such questions on the spot, and have been frustrated with the lack of easy options for searching my own Twitter archives.

So I went exploring across the interwebs this week to see if I could come up with a better way of handling this scenario. And what do you know, I found myself a bit of a gem in the form of Andy Graulund’s self-hosted Twitter archive browsing and search solution called “Tweet Nest”.

The PHP application available for free download from “pongsocket.com” was relatively easy to set up in a sub directory on my blog server and I’d say within about 15 minutes of uploading, setting up a database and installing, I was good to go with what you can now view and explore here:

http://www.masey.com.au/twitter/masey/

It’s a beauty. You can browse back through my Twitter archive based on month, day or even a search keyword which delivers more accurate results than anything I was able to perform using Twitter’s own advanced search option! Each tweet listed in the archive or search pages show thumbnails for included images (when possible), and I have to say, generally the UI has been well-thought out and executed in all respects.

If I had to pick a downside to Tweet Nest, it would be that the total number of archived tweets that are able to be retrieved on initial installation is limited to 3,200. For someone, like me, who has unleashed over 8,000 tweets onto their loyal followers, this isn’t ideal as well over half of my “pearls of wisdom” are already missing from my personal archive. It must be noted that this is a Twitter API imposed limit, however, so I can’t vent in the direction of Tweet Nest in this instance.

That issue aside, however, Tweet Nest is good stuff. Anybody who has a basic knowledge of the setup process involved in setting up a WordPress blog will be able to handle the well documented installation process, as well as the small amount of ongoing database updating and maintenance required.

I look forward to being able to take advantage of its features in the future and I invite you again to browse through my new personal Twitter archive which you can find here.

Theo Jansen & his ‘Strandbeests’

masey — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 05:04:13 +0000

While creeping around Strombo’s (George Stroumboulopoulos) CBC website today, I found an article regarding a creative and clever Dutch “kinetic sculptor” named Theo Jansen.

Theo’s has spent over two decades creating and unleashing a series of huge PVC creatures known as “Strandbeests” (Beach Beasts) on the sandy shores in his native country. Using the wind as their power source, these plastic works of living art are able to move independently in a smooth, alien-like way along the sand in a motion that is nothing short of fascinating.

The following video from the BBC’s “Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention” gives you a good look at Theo’s creations as they come to life and march along the beach in an eerily organic lifelike way.

A little more digging around and I was able to find this great TED talk that Theo Jansen gave in March 2007. It gives a good account of the thinking behind these creations from the lips of their creator.