INSPO #1 Google Voice
Missing important calls from a prospective clients, a potential job opportunity or an overseas call from a loved one is frustrating in itself. But it's even more frustrating when you have to retrieve a voicemail, entering your passcode, listening to a voicemail a few times repeatedly to jot down that number and get all the relevant information.
This is probably old news for some, but in 2009, Google created Google Voice. It's the one number to rule them all - home, work & mobile phone (-> insert geek quote "one ring to rule them all"). The neat feature is that it automatically transcripts the voicemail to an email and if you have a gmail account, it sends it to you. You can also search through your transcripts like you do with your inbox emails. There's also other features like identifying the caller, customised caller experience, make overseas conference calls, block unwanted callers and choose to receive calls at home, work, or on your mobile based on who's calling or when. Which for a lot of businesses, a very useful tool to enhance efficiency, productivity or sometimes just a moment of solitude.
Google has identified a minute problem in phone user experience and has made it all so easy. It is probably a problem that we are so use to that we blindly accept this as a way of life. So once again thank you Google.
Google have you thought of everything in this world? Why are you such a genius?
Rachel, Graphic Designer & Illustrator
INSPO #2 Snow Artist, Simon Beck
Documentary on Simon Beck as part of #inspirasjonstryn
My inspiration this week is focused on creativity and the act of creation in its' purest form - absent of any other motivation than producing something good. Creating for love, passion and fascination.
I stumbled upon a short documentary on a 'Snow Artist'. Never hearing of the term before I had to watch it. It follows the artist, Simon Beck, as he creates his intricate mathematical pattern in an expansive patch of fresh snow in Stryn, Norway.
For the past 10 years, Beck has been decorating the Alps by running around in patterns with his snow shoes. Each images takes him up to 11 hours to make and covers an area about 100m x 100m, meaning he travels up to 25miles to mark out the pattern. He also creates around 30 works a year, with a total of 175 under his belt. Source
Beck, 56, went to Millfield School and studied engineering at Oxford University. In 1974 he won the British Orienteering Championships and has spent most of his adult life working as a freelance orienteering mapmaker. For those who don't know, Orienteering is a family of sports that requires navigational skills using a map and compass to navigate from point to point in diverse and usually unfamiliar terrain, and normally moving at speed.
He speaks about inspiration and what he thinks it means, saying "inspiration is a word that has quite a lot of interpretations to it I think. Ask a lot of people what inspiration means and you'll get quite a lot of different answers. I think inspiration is something that leads to motivation". And I think that's such a strong, simple but effectively very true statement.
Simon Beck, you have motivated me by your sheer passion and will, creating things for enjoyment not ego, grandeur, money, etc. A great reminder to let my creative juices flow!
Renata, Graphic Designer & Photographer
View this amazing gallery of his works here
Amazing 2 minute time-lapse video on his practice when he was invited to Banff
Italy’s Lake Iseo is currently playing host to my dream, but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to get there in time!
Artists Christo & Jeanne-Claude have created, in my opinion, the ultimate sensory experience.
For sixteen days – June 18 through July 3, 2016 – The Floating Peers will be available to the public. The exhibition is made up of 100,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric, carried by a modular floating dock system of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes, undulated with the movement of the waves.
I love being carried away by art and imagination, and any creation of this scale leaves me in awe. The experience of not only walking on golden water, but seeing the Italian landscape from that perspective is truly once in a lifetime. Friends in the area, go and let me live vicariously through you!
Laura, Account Manager
