I haven't had a chance to make my way over to Banksy's new animatronic art installation in the West Village, but it looks like a good time... if you like wiggling hot dogs, swimming fish-sticks and the brutal reality of Tweety Bird. Pop over and check it out before its taken down on October 31st. In the meantime, here is a video documenting the installation...
NOTCOT: Banksy's Village Petstore & Charcoal Grill from Jean Aw on Vimeo.

I've always been a fan of movie posters - but I think they're so often seen as pure advertising and the excellent design sense of some of them goes unnoticed. Here is a great compilation of some of the best!

This morning I came across a really fascinating article covering the debate over inexpensive online logo & "branding" companies by Doug Bartow (id29) via the Under Consideration design discussion blog Speak Up.

It highlights the ongoing debate of accessibility of design for all (income brackets) versus "...the devaluation of the design process altogether, particularly in brand development and identity design, which many consider the pinnacle of our field." – by cheapening the proverbial playing field.

In his field study of this issue, Doug commissions 4 different online companies to come up with logo options for a fictitious project and then analyzes and critiques the results. It is a good exploration of what you really get from these types of logo chop shops.

The Challenge: Hire four online logo design companies, give them the same visual identity problem to solve, then critique the results.

Take a look here.

Oh happy day for interactive developers and designers. Apparently Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual Flash content and making it searchable in its browsers! This means more visibility and less jumping through hoops for those who want to use flash in their web applications.

Read the article here.

I'll admit it - I'm a complete internet radio junkie. I love it, listen to it constantly, and rely on it to introduce me to new stuff. Up until now, I've been a solid last.fm girl, but I recently stumbled upon blip.fm. Blip is an odd combination of Twitter and internet radio, that allows you to become a "DJ," to "blip" what you're listening to, and to listen to other DJs who have similar tastes to you. I'm still trying to get a feel for how it all works, but it seems pretty great. Check it out here - and add me as a DJ - my DJ name is "isureamheather."

...when it's good, it's good. But when it's bad, well...not so great, according to the NYT.

Some examples:

A Chevrolet billboard that used real pennies lasted only 30 minutes as people picked it clean.

In London, Right Guard sent a team of people onto subway trains with tiny video screens in the armpits of their shirts.

Either way, we're still talking about it...so maybe the point is getting across anyway?

Need to decompress a bit from sitting and staring at your computer for hours on end? Check out thisissand.com for a fun way to do it - reminiscent of those sand art crafts projects we all did as kids. Pick your colors and just click to create mountains of colored sand. Be careful though, this one is addicting...

Twitter has just passed the One Billion Tweets mark, according to GigaTweet!

A wise man once said, "Wherever you go, there you are," and now with Geode, announced today from Mozilla Labs, your web browser will know where you are as well. Geode will be available in the upcoming beta releases of Firefox 3.1, and will allow users to fire up their computers from any location, direct their browser to their favorite review site (like Yelp, Citysearch, etc.), and have customized location-specific information surfaced. But the potential expands beyond just fun - imagine an RSS reader that knows the difference between Home and Work, or a news website that is truly local. Read more at the Mozilla Labs blog.

Finally, something for us [few] PC users [left] out there to get excited about! The Beta version of Google Chrome has launched today, and it's only available for those of us fortunate enough to be running Vista. My initial test run of it here is looking pretty good so far - I'm loving the visual representation of your most visited websites as the default homepage. Check it out here!

A friend just turned me on to this delightfully simple work log, ididwork.com. The name pretty much says it all; log the work that you did, tag it if you like, and ididwork.com will create charts mapping your work, email your logs to your manager (if desired), and schedule work reviews. This is a handy little tool for jobs where you have to log hours on certain projects, or you may be working on site and have to report in your work to your manager. Just a great example on how simplicity wins over and a site without too many bells and whistles can be most useful.

Just in case you were wondering whether the Hadron Collider being tested right now at CERN has destroyed the world yet, you now have a handy website to go to check it out: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Not sure what to do when you're feeling chill? Sophisticated? Energetic? I Feel NYC is one of the most clever (and funny/useful) Google Maps application that I've come across. Also available for London.

The designs for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing have been revealed, called "Fuwa" (below). It's being reported in the WSJ that even the mascots' designer doesn't want to take responsibility if these don't go down in history as iconic Olympic mascots.

Not that the Fuwa have been the only controversial mascots; since its inception at the Munich games in 1972, the Olympic mascot has always been a source of debate (more mascots below after the jump). The article goes on to state how the Fuwa may be the result of "Too Many Chefs" syndrome and a bureaucratic backlog, a challenge in trying to create an iconic image representing 1.3 billion people and their history - the five Fuwa were pared down from over 1,000 sketches submitted by the artist.

Not sure what I think about them...any thoughts?

Continue reading to see some other mascots from past Olympics...

The first Olympic mascot - Waldi (Munich 1972)

Cobi (Barcelona 1992)

Izzy (Atlanta 1996)

Syd, Ollie, and Millie (Sydney 2000)

Athena and Phevos (Athens 2004)

...you get the Most Innovative Celebrities in Digital Media, or, the Econoclast10.

The LUPE may look like another touchscreen camera but this concept is designed for ease of use and simplicity even tho technically it’s quite complex.