Last night we spent the evening at Tine Bech’s + DCRC’s + PM Studio’s tracing light event.

The event was designed to carry out a public consultation using play. So, no never-ending online forms, questionnaires with leading questions and ratty ladies in the street. Basically, get a load of people together, tell them to think about what the space around means to them, then go out and draw it in fun light shapes. Which… was really fun!

Here’s some of team PM Studio’s pics from tracinglight.co.uk,

Smokers

Watershed cinema

It was also a pretty jammy’ night, a great chance to chat with great Bristol artists, business people & photographers. Never mind heading to the golf course for business, Thought Den do it next to the bar, create some art and do research on new media practices too. Bloody brilliant.

Here’s some more things other groups made, and to find out more, contact Tine Bech

Thought Den have been in London, invited down to a BBC Audio and Music Interctive christmas schmooze sesh off the back of the multiplatfom event at the Arnolfini a few weeks back. Don’t worry, those license fee pennies were well spent, no swanky venue and red carpet, but a great opportunity to bend the ears of some high-flying and genuinely interested indie commissioners. We talked IA, streaming, widgets, web cams and I even name dropped Happy Packages!

Our concept and prototype for the next level in locative rating systems really caught the attention and I found myself getting excited all over again. Two buttons, one red one green. Or one smiley one sad. Or one tick, one cross. And all you do is rate how you’re feeling at that time in that place. The iPhone fairy then takes over, sends the rating and GPS data to our servers and we create a happy heat map of the world…

In other news, touchscreens have taken over the world. Every shop front worth its salt within a square mile of Oxford Circus now has some form of large, interactive touchscreen wizardry for passing pedestrians. The battle is on for the hearts and minds, fingertips and hard-earned dollar of the casual window shopper. You Tube and 4OD have also teamed up in Carnaby St for a truly widescreen touch-off.

The exciting news is that Thought Den and Joanie Lemercier have been plotting some similar schemes over the last few months and our first prototype will be demoed at the TD offices in the new year. Watch this 3D space…

Things seem to take longer these frosty-morning-creaky-limbed days. Apologies for the delay in posting, but finally we have some lovely videos to shout about.

The first is very exciting – we were commissioned by the BBC to run a workshop at the Pervasive Media Studio back in October. The brief was to give the hottest new BBC design recruits a taste of pervasive thinking. What better company to run the event than the den thinkers. It was a fun day with talks from the likes of Tom Melamed of Calvium, Luke Jerram and a stand-up brainstorm session on the PM’s monstrous and curving white board. Nick Johnston (Hatboy to most and many) kindly videoed and edited the highlights, so please plug in for 3 minutes of Thought Den magic…And Dan’s hair looks much better this time, eh!?

Another somewhat delayed announcement follows – the igfest 09 highlights reel is in! Geoff Taylor has been hard at it in the edit suite, Simon Johson has been on the phone to his copyright lawyers and I’ve been keeping interested parties happy with taster emails packed with images. But the wait is over, moving picture technology has triumped, gorge at will. What an awesome event it is. Roll on 2010.

igfest 09 from Igfest on Vimeo.

Probably, he’s gotta have something interesting to distract himself away from the endless chatter of his babbling twitter-bird buddy down the pub.

So Yes, he would. And right next to it, he would so have the app being built by Calvium, the new company whose launch-bash Thought Den were all invited to last night.

Thanks =)

They’re a Phoenix launching from the ashes of a global corporation and are utilising their 70 years of shared experience for “making tools for enabling others to build exciting mobile apps based on sensors and context”.

The party was ace, fuelled with flowing champagne, tasty pizza from the Firehouse Rottisere and lots of chatty people. Also, they ran a game (as Bristol igfesters would!). Where each attendee had to twit their thoughts on where they thought the word “Calvium” came from in history. Here are Thought Den’s entries,

@thoughtben

@dancourse

…which we didn’t quite win with, but check them all out at http://twitter.com/search?q=%23calviumroots

As for the future, we can’t wait to be BETA testing the platform of an application which is clearly going to be attracting some bigger attention.

tom talking

phil's intro

jo laughing

clare tweeting

clapping

Hold up… I’ve just started this blog post and realised it’s Tuesday? Where did Monday go? I have a feeling I’ve just come down from riding from an AWESOME wave of awesomeness’ we got from playing at igFest.

The festival, igFest (interesting games festival) was conceived by Simon (more…)

Meltdown

And now for a brief news update. First off, Ben has been working so hard since his return from France that his MacBook Pro battery exploded. No joke, pictures enclosed. Our Mac technician emailed with his diagnosis – “your battery is swolen and bloated and is a danger to the health of you and your machine”. Enough said, new one on order.

Footy Fantastic

In other news, Team Rubber played some fantastic football at the 2009 Bristol Media Footy Tournament. As nominated scurrier, charger, harrier and ball of fury, Ben was honoured to feature in the new black and gold strip complete with Rubber crest. The group games started slow with a draw, but changed up a few gears with some resounding wins, not least a 6-0 demolition with two-goals-Templeton netting…twice. A tough quarter final went to penalties, but our athletic keeper kept us in the action. With only 5 minutes to rest, and playing in sahara-like conditions, we were running on empty. And with only 5 minutes played we lost Ives at 1-0 up in the semi, ending in a draw for yet more penalties. For some reason Ben took the first penalty…keeper dived right, Ben skies it over the bar. But after more heroics from Bunny-Button, our star keeper, we went to sudden death. And lost. To the eventual tournament winners Smith and Williamson. Well done. Go shuffle some more legal papers.

GI JOE is go

After a manic and stressful build our star flash developer Tommy Arnott pulled out the stops and delivered a stonking multi-language GI JOE quiz, with the help of excellent copy writing and project management over at Rubber Towers. Enjoy the game below and check out the other part of the GI JOE campaign, some outstanding 3D work from Mr Webster (of our Virtual Tour fame) who helped ‘unearth’ some ‘leaked footage’ from the GI JOE recruits’ archive…

I know, I know, you’ve all missed me, just check out my Facebook news update page…

Not to worry people! I’ve been away on break/holiday/can’t stand Ben anymore/vacation for 3weeks. Catch up with me below…

Play: A week of singing!
Those who know me, also now how much of my life outside of Thought Den I dedicate to singing the best I can, and my chorus had the opportunity to compete Internationally in California. Luckily it wasn’t like the US, ‘world series’ which comprises of teams picked only from the states… It included the Swedish (Zero 8), New Zealanders and the Deutsch.

In the competition, the Great Western Chorus sang really well and we came a respectable 23rd. Not as high as we’d hope, yet, but still that does mean it’s 23rd in the world. Effectively, I’m now much better than all of you lot at singing… Barbershop style… jealous right… I can hear the sighs of, ‘I still couldn’t care less Dan’ and the click of your mouse navigating you to, no doubt, a better-written Blog post by Ben.

After singing ourselves broken that week, forming a new Bristol quartet and managing to finish a stonkingly good book called, America un-chained by Dave Gorman. We said our goodbyes and headed up to a new city. Somewhere that can only be described as, ‘a warmer Bristol’.

Rest: San Francisco baby!

That city is nearly amazing. We never stopped meeting really cool people offering us tickets, invites and cheescake. However, the term “nearly” is important, because the city’s grid system has the same confusing nature of a mini-Milton Keynes, only without any roundabouts. “Have I seen this building before?”, “I think we need a cab… oh it’s just around the corner?!” and it’s cold!

That week, we spent time rocking out at Baseball matches, drinking Bud with Welsh people and sleeping through checkout time. Smoooooth.

Work: What about Thought Den then, you lazy monkey?

Don’t panic! This week may have been a time of checking in and out of various hostels and enjoying some sun, but I got to meeting some cool Silicon Valley people, like

- The Entrepreneur, creating a New Networking site purely for traveling. Silicon Valley people talking to hostelers (haven’t we all seen this stuff before, Dopplr?)
- Google Chrome OS, met the Google man who’s excited and wanted to tell me lots of NDA stuff… but couldn’t obviously! Thanks god speak-easys later that night =)

- New PM Studio being set-up in Palo Alto, missed meeting Gene, but I’m sure it’d been fun!

Now, this week. Mostly I’ve been checking out the new iPhone OS 3.0 and playing with a silly tutorial button designed only to frustrate you. Reading up on Chrome OS, realising Twitter is just the same as any other business and how to use Flys for social networking!

The important thing is though, it’s time to set-up a satellite office.

Next: … I skipped all the above rubbish, are you coming home? ‘Cos we don’t miss you

So, that’s me nearly done. I’m heading back in on Wednesday the 22nd July, then ready for Thought Den towers on Thurs. It’ll be sad to leave obviously but I can’t wait to talk to you lovely people again over a jet-lagged cup o’ char.

Loves from the US of A.

Thought Den have just returned from a whirlwind trip to the big smoke to check out the fresh new talent blossoming onto the creative scene. Free Range at The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane has been running for a while, and as an ex-Bournemouth student I exhibited there myself; it proved to be a great start to the career, and I also got to collect millions of cool postcards from all the illustrators at Central St Martins, Camberwell, UCA etc.

We were invited to the preview of the Screen Grab showcase, the Bournemouth Media School lot, who over the years have created a name for themselves as interactive maestros, mixing interactive displays with 3D Unity games, iPhone apps, hyperlocal Google mashups and social networking. Course leader Mik Parsons gets in the groove with Aneurin’s drum-tastic drumming game…

The beer and busines cards flowed but we had to make our drunken exit for an early train. There’s some really great work there and it’s open for the coming weekend so head down if you’ve got time. It’s also right by Spitalfields, where Dan and I snuck in some cheeky Capoeira…

Know anyone invited to go to the MIA awards and win something? We do, us! The Pervasive Media Studio, where we’re currently residents, scooped the ‘outstanding contribution to innovation’ award.

The sexy awards night showcases the best in the South West’s talent through a wide spectrum of Media categories.

I found some of the best pieces were, Scayrecrow a dark and twisted animation that scared the cr*p out of me in the screening.

Moose Hunt, which let loose ripples of giggling from all tables as Simon from Simon Games meandered through the New forest with nothing but a moose costume on….

Finally, we were honored to be the guests for the University of the West of England’s table, red-wine included. It’s was very warming to see all their School of Art, Media and Design staff talking so passionately about their job roles. Lots of chatting about how they’re making their MA the best, discussions about maximizing students employability and the direction of their courses. Even better however is how much fun they all are, comments about ‘interesting’ Satin dresses, the 2 course Dean and school photos… What goes on tour, stays on tour.

Let’s see what Thought Den can win on their own next year!

It’s a long way away and it’s got a big red bridge. Thought Den’s second voyage across the Atlantic will shortly commence – I’ll be heading out on Sunday for, let’s be honest, as little business as possible and as much pleasure as my wallet will afford. But it’s not often we’re that side of the globe so I’ll pimping our wares to the great and good of Sillicon Valley, in between a sneaky 10 days on the slopes at Lake Tahoe.

Meanwhile back in Bristol the good ship sails on – an exciting new enterprise with the BBC is soon to be announced, while ongoing updates to The JD Set site, including some fantastic new videos and music, mean it’s as popular as ever. Bournemouth’s Virtual Tour has undergone a little refresh, aMap is storming it’s way round the digital discolines and a very special project is currently undergoing a trial period with an extremely large TV production company…