It’s been a busy few days for us at the LG Blog as we’ve been giving the site a bit of a redesign and test - not much different but we’ve made the site a bit more useful and interesting: we now link to our Twitter, Flickr and YouTube profiles as well as the international versions of the blog (see the flags on the right). We hope you like the new bits and if there are any bugs then let us know.

Anyway, normal service has now resumed and this is just a quick post to let you know that after the fun we had meeting other bloggers at SMS Text’s Unlimited Drinks last month, I’m going to be down at James Whatley’s Mobile Geeks of London IV tonight so keep an eye out for me and collar me if you get a chance. See you there!

I noticed today that ASOS have extended their Independent Designer collection again:

we’re proud to announce the addition of four brand new labels to the Laden Showroom section of the site. Sourced and stocked by Adele Laden in the east London store bearing her name, and in turn put online by our good selves, the latest additions are Woona (featuring ra-ra frills and bright colours a-plenty), Ria Roberts (cute Liberty-esque prints), Ducie (fab embellishments, as seen below) and Shazia Saleem (lots of deliciously dark pieces perfect for next season).

And Dezeen have teamed up with Tent London to offer newly graduated (BA or MA) designers an opportunity to be exhibited at the Talent Zone in London Design Week this September:

Talent Zone will exhibit work by recent graduates from a range of disciplines including furniture, ceramics, textiles, graphics, jewellery and product design. Part of Tent London, it takes place in the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane from 18-21 September this year

Good luck to anyone entering the competition - if you’re new to Dezeen it’s a very handy site to bookmark as this isn’t the first competition of this kind they’ve been involved in - and kudos to Dezeen and ASOS for giving opportunities to the new blood!

Last week Sheffield, this week Edinburgh - the LG Style Icon contest’s tour of the UK continues!

This weekend it’s the seventh roadshow event. LG will be hosting an open-call photo-shoot at The Gyle shopping centre from 10am on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th July.

For more information about the competition, check out the official LG StyleIcon site.

Some of the UK’s top gadget blogs have been reviewing the LG Secret for us and we’re really pleased to see the reaction from some of the experts out there - it means you don’t have to just take our word for it about the phone.

Daniel at Product Reviews gave the phone a detailed unboxing and went on to rave about the M-Toy, shooting a video of all the different games on it:

Simon of Zath! focuses on the phone’s toughness and a couple of quirks aside, it looks like he enjoyed it a lot too:

Tempered Glass Screen – this looks great and is one of the best screens I’ve ever used in terms of the feeling of quality – it’s already proven to me that it resists scratches very well indeed – after having used it for over a month of general day to day use, there are no scratches whatsoever – at one point it even got dropped onto the tarmac surface of a car park (by accident I might add). I was a little worried at that point, but when picked it up, I was relieved to see that the screen was still looking in perfect condition!

Gaj of Gaj-It meanwhile really took a shine to the Secret’s touch interface:

I know I keep saying the old worn out phrase, ‘LG are Kings of Touchscreen’, well I’m going to have to say it again because with the Secret phone they have managed to integrate touchscreen and mechanical keys for those of you who don’t like touch screen very well.

Check out all three reviews for a full set of perspectives on the phone - and if you’re worried about balance, they all also talk about the Secret’s quirks and foibles and the problems they had with it: after all, no phone is perfect.

Finally, if you want to find out more about the Secret then check out the latest video on our YouTube channel, which takes you through its features one-by-one:

Apparently we’re having another ‘mini-heatwave’ today and tomorrow before the traditional British summer returns with the rain on Friday so make way to the beach to enjoy it now, if you can. While you’re there, try being a bit more ambitious than the usual sand castle or sunbathing with a book - take these guys as your inspiration:

It’s the world’s first ever sand hotel, down in Dorset and is accepting its first guests for £10 a night.

It took 1,000 tonnes of sand, a JCB and a team of four sculptors working 14 hours a day for a week to build the structure on Weymouth beach.

Guests can book to stay in the hotel, which includes beds made out of sand, until the rain washes it away. The hotel offers a twin and double bedroom, while the roofless structure gives guests the chance to “star-gaze” at night, the firm said.

The hotel’s creator, Mark Anderson, said:

It is the biggest sandcastle-like structure ever in the UK. Four of us worked hard and with the help of a JCB we got it built. The beds are made of sand so it can get everywhere, especially between the toes. But the best thing is in the morning the tide laps through the door, what a great way to wake up.

You can see a video report with more information on the BBC’s website. There is also a Sand Sculpture Festival in Weston-super-Mare now until the end of August.

Today 50 ‘Land Girls’ and ‘Lumber Jills’, representing the surviving members of the Women’s Land Army and Women’s Timber Corps, will go to 10 Downing Street for a formal ceremony attended by Gordon Brown where they will be presented with their badges.

Hilda Gibson, a wartime Land Girl said:

“To serve one’s country in its greatest hour of need, in whatever capacity, for me remains memorable. To receive an award honouring the wartime work of the Women’s Land Army is a powerful and touching recognition.”

Hilda wrote a poem about her land girl experiences which you can read here

There are also regional events planned to mark the formal recognition of the women’s role in the war effort and any women who served in the WTC or WLA can apply for their badge and certificate by contacting DEFRA.

According to the BBC over 30,000 applications for the commemorative badges have been received so far.

Enjoy your day in the sun ladies, it’s long overdue!

Ever wanted to know how to make a 17′ Tall cardboard Gandhi?

No..?

Me neither, truth be told, but I love that The Instructables thought we might and decided to share the know-how. It’s billed as ‘the world’s biggest show and tell’ (a description which could well be applied to the internet as a whole if you ask me!) the Instructables will help you learn how to make your own handpuppets, playdough or rock guitar mods, create a Sweeney Todd-inspired dress or even make a Boombox for your iPod out of old tupperware!

And if none of that helps you then here’s a slightly more unusual site: NiceCritic - which lets you send anonymous suggestions and tips to friends, colleagues and anyone you have an email address for. I found out that I’m a rather loud snacker thanks to this site (it’s not my fault - handcooked crisps are impossible to eat quietly!) and our office has spent the afternoon bonding with anonymous honesty overflowing… At least I’ll never have to worry about what my colleagues think of me again!

Last week, Solihull this week Sheffield - the LG Style Icon contest is brought to you by the letter S..!

This weekend we’re heading to MeadowHall for the sixth of our roadshow events. LG will be hosting an open-call photo-shoot at the shopping centre from 10am on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th July.

Any budding models in Scotland - let preparations commence, the roadshow hits Edinburgh next week, don’t miss it!

For more information about the competition, check out the official LG StyleIcon site.

It’s been one of those weeks for receiving forward emails of record breakers, unexplained images and very cool links - unusual because most weeks its just unexplained images and unexplainable links…

Anyway, I’ve saved them all up for you, for a weekend treat (or an easy Friday morning blog post if you’re cynical) Hope you aren’t on the same forward list as me and at least one of these is new for you!

1) Brian Chan does amazing origami! The Carp is my favourite:

Flying Carp

2) You can now play NES games in Firefox thanks to the nifty Spanish FirNes widget! (Page translated by Google)

3) For the ultimate NES feel you could try copying Antoinette J Citizen (cool name, no?)

4) No one heard about the World’s Biggest Swimming Pool when it took the record in January but it’s now an email sensation (I’ve received it 3 times in 4 days!)

5) This man

does impressive things with eggs:

I have yet to work out who he is and where or why he does it though… Answers on a comment please if you know!

Yesterday Jonathan Glancey defended Zaha Hadid and the team working on the 2012 Olympics Aquatic Centre. I’m sure the free papers would describe it as him hitting back or lashing out at the accusations that rising costs on the beautiful Centre. Personally I think he’s just talking sense - although regular readers will know I’m a fan of Ms Hadid so I could always be biased!

It is the architectural high note of the Olympic build in my mind and I think it would be a tragedy if the costs and controversies surrounding the larger project overshadowed the building. Hadid seems to have a lot of problems like this on her UK projects and I think it’s remarkable that she always keeps her head down, weathers the storm and keeps coming back to offer us new wonders for our landscape. I’m not sure we entirely deserve it but I’m very glad she does!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the building in question here’s an animation showing it off:

The shape of the roof is symbolic of the flow of water and it always makes me think of sea life - some kind of stingray or eel perhaps..?

I was sad to discover today that Olive Riley, the woman thought to be the World’s Oldest Blogger, died last week, aged 108. Olive’s blog ‘The Life of Riley‘ chronicled her life growing up in the Outback, raising kids, and working as a bartender and farm cook in New South Wales, Australia.

Her friends Mike Rubbo and Eric Shackle, who helped her maintain the blog, have written touching tributes on both her site and the temporary World’s Oldest Blogger blog and its a testament to her popularity that her main blog is currently experiencing technical difficulties after having been overwhelmed by the outpouring of messages and tributes left by friends and readers.

Mike says in the most recent post:

Her example says; if a woman who left school in 1914, can embrace the internet in her 106th year, what is there you can’t do, friend?
…
If you look back through the thousands of comments we had, you’ll see that her power to inspire comes up again and again.
“Thanks so much Ollie, for inspiring my parents to get active, and overcome their fear of computers.” is a typical comment

Olive blogged for 15 months and is survived, and mourned, by “thousands of Internet friends and hundreds of descendants and other relatives” the blog, or blob as she often called it, was “mind-blowing to her,” her great grandson Darren Stone said.

“She had people communicating with her from as far away as Russia and America on a continual basis, not just once in a while. She enjoyed the notoriety - it kept her mind fresh.”

I saw this on Creative Review today and just had to share:

Rarely is cooking so endearing!

Alfie over at Moblog alerted me to the UK Catalyst Awards, which are in their words, awards for: “inspiring stories of people who help their community by using social technology in new and exciting ways.” It’s a government-sponsored initiative and it’s great to see that these innovative grassroots sites and communities, and the shortlist shows plenty of really good sites.

Some of them use the power of the web bring people together - such as School of Everything or Slivers of Time - whether it’s finding someone to teach you something or a way of finding extra work. Others bring together people and those in power, like Patient Opinion and Where Is My Public Servant?, while others help people find out what’s around them in their area, such as Groups Near You and Big Art Mob (which Alfie is involved with).

That’s just a taste of what is a very good range of projects; although some of them have very local or specific outlooks, they all have the community in mind: whether big or small they work along the same simple philosophy of finding a need and filling it. I recommend taking a tour through the very-well designed website and voting for your favourite in the People’s Choice award. The full awards are announced some time this month (I couldn’t find a date on the website - if anyone knows let us know in the comments!) so keep an eye out for them.

Via TechDigest comes this lovely bit of Bluetooth hardware - the Flee Digital camera. It’s a camera equipped with Bluetooth that you can throw into the air and take lovely aerial shots, which it sends back to your mobile via Bluetooth before returning to ground undamaged:

It reminds me of the great photos you can see on the Camera Toss blog or Flickr pool. While the camera might not match up to your cameraphone’s quality it saves risking the poor thing if you drop it. That said, if your phone’s tough enough to stand up to it then it might not be an issue - hang on, that gives me an idea…

There’s been a lot of buzz today’s over Google’s latest venture, Lively, which is their new 3D Virtual World. Similar in outlook to Second Life, it looks a little more cartoony and maybe even aimed at a younger market, judging by the official trailer video shows:

TechDigest point out that it’s not quite the same as Second Life though:

Rather than having a single persistent online space, Google intends Lively to be more of an addition to existing web space. User can enter a Lively space from a blog or website and then interact with fellow users, chat and prance about making daft emotes.

There’s more on it over at Product Reviews and The Guardian as well. The embedding into blogs and webpages is a nice idea and although I haven’t tried it out yet I might have a crack at creating an LG Blog room for this site. Any ideas what I should put into it?

This kinetic sculpture from the BMW museum is at times astonishing. Bear with it - it starts out looking quite random but after a minute becomes beautifully undulating and full of form:

A truly beautiful way of using movement to showcase your design - I can’t say much more than that! Enjoy.

I don’t know about you but one of my guilty pleasures is popping bubble wrap. Bubble wrap is an ubiquitous feature of modern life - whenever you need to send something fragile, it does the job. In fact it’s been with us for over fifty years, having been invented in 1957 according to Wikipedia, and people love popping it so much there’s even an online version of the stuff, although popping it is not quite as satisfying as the real thing.

Bubblewrap-poppers everywhere have traditionally had to resort to scavenging for discarded envelopes and packaging or even raiding the bins to satisfy their habit, but now finally someone’s decided to bring it into the open, and while they’re at it, combine it with a nice little bit of design. Over at Coolest Gadgets today Andrew has blogged about a bubble wrap calendar:

As well as being a satisfying way to start the day, the trail of popped bubbles provide a quick and easy way of pinpointing the exact date - like an automatic way of marking off the days with an “X”. A nice little bit of design, there. The only problem is, as we all know, is that popping just one is never enough - what’s to stop the easily-tempted from popping all the bubbles on the very first day? It could take a lot of willpower.

Just a couple of quick links to share with you today - sort of a saw this and thought of you post!

Isn’t this lovely? (I feel I’m doing a bit of a Di over at Designers’ Block today!)

It’s a page from Ecodazoo(”The Eco Zoo”) a gorgeous Japanese site about being eco-friendly with advice issued by various creatures and critters from the pages of a pop-up book! (Made of recycled paper I’m sure!)

And while the title is completely covered by that site, here’s another one which is fun but possibly educational..
The Secret of Johan Lorbeer’s Still-Life Performance Johan Lorbeer has been causing a stir in European cities with his fantastic performances of just standing still for long periods.. while invisibly suspended above the ground! Human statues in Covent Garden take note!

Happy Monday all!

Last month we mentioned we were in the public nominations for the ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08. Thank you to all of you who supported our nomiation and we’re really pleased to say we have made the final shortlist of ten in the Company category, as hand-picked by the judges! We’d like to say our thanks to them, and to tell you the shortlist is now open to a public vote so if you’re a fan of the LG blog then get voting!

in Company Blogs

We’re in some good company, including SMS Text News and Tracy & Matt in the Mobile category, and Paul Fabretti’s Blending The Mix in the Web 2.0 category. We recommend you check them out & vote for them while you’re there. Wish us luck for when the results are announced in August!

Not your typical Friday night invite is it? - Or is it?!

I heard on the breakfast news this morning that the London Festival of Architecture is hosting an ‘Architectural Jelly Banquet‘ tonight, where jelly creations submitted to the Architectural Jelly Design Competition will be on display (and the title suggests eaten but I’m not entirely sure on that point..) Having seen a couple I’m torn, the lovely St Paul’s replica by Greta Ilieva for example:

It almost seems a shame to eat it, but then it is made of jelly and jelly is made to be eaten… If it’s art does it stop being food or does it being food stop it being art? Or can it exist as both and be interacted with and treated as both..? I’m not sure, all I know is I’m now feeling a little like Carrie in SATC and also a bit hungry… But for something less complicated than jelly!

Over 100 designers and architects including big names like Sir Norman Foster, Wil Alsop and Lord Richard Rogers have submitted entries to the competition - I wonder what Zaha Hadid would have made?!

The competition will raise money for the London Festival of Architecture’s disaster and development charity, Article[25]. The banquet has been organised by the ‘JellyMongers’ Bompas and Parr.

I don’t fully understand how this works but isn’t it cool?

Chronotopic Anamorphosis from Marginalia Project on Vimeo.