“The main goal of the Integra project is to create a new piece of software for composing and performing music with live electronics. The environment will be tested in real life thanks to substantial new commissions and an effort to modernise existing repertoire that currently uses obsolete technology. Furthermore, the project is an exciting opportunity to bring together research centres and new music ensembles from across Europe.”  - Integralive.org

We’re very excited to be involved in UI/UX design and Graphic design for this new music software development project. There is a news post here about our involvement. Have a look at the whole site for more information on the groundbreaking work that Integra are doing.

Some very interesting illustrations made by Evangelos Papazoglou, inspired by handmade signs of a bygone time. Rooted in culture and spoken language but seen from a contemporary point of view, these illustrations do not try to conceal the fact they are handmade, but rather use it as a feature, creating a strange resonance.

http://calligraphic.wordpress.com

i just got link from a friend of mine who is subletting an interesting studio space in Berlin Mitte click image to see more pictures

The results are in! The Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab won in the category “Game or Application” - thank you, jury! The People’s Voice Award went to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ Hotel 626.

We also received a People’s Voice Award in the category “Food and Beverages” - thank you, people! The category winner is Nike Football Head2Head by R/GA.

Click here for a full list of the nominees and winners.

Update: “Less Rain überrundet Jung von Matt” - ZDF Mittagsmagazin (German)

Don’t miss the next Talk about the Weather, where Frieder Weiss will show dance performances enhanced by motion-tracking real-time projections, Andreas Sommerwerk will tell the story behind his hand stitched watches, and Tobias Neisecke demonstrates the use of virtual worlds for healthcare & medical issues.

Talk about the Weather vol 12, Tuesday 5th May, 20 - 23h, at The Less Rain Basement Berlin.

Saw a presentation of one of the founders of Berlin based company betterplace.org yesterday. I absolutely love the idea, it’s an online marketplace (like ebay or amazon) for social projects, that allows you to give donations directly to social projects posted by people who are actually working on these projects, not some obscure organisation.

The credibility of these projects is regulated by the community itself, donations are forwarded 100%. Betterplace themselves are a non-profit organization and make their money by consulting companies for social activities based on the platform.

Rarely heard of a smoother and nobler business model!

Flight Lab has been nominated in two categories at this year’s Webby Awards, “Websites - Food and Beverages” and “Interactive Advertising - Games”. Vote now for Flight Lab at The Webby People’s Voice Award (requires registration).

Update: Voting is now closed - the winners will be announced in just a few days, on May 5th.

As many of you know, music is one of my passions. I consider it’s an evidence that in the story of the Spanish music, where I come from, there have been and there are bands that deserve to be much more known that they are, even in my own country. That’s why a group of friends of mine and me created lafonoteca, a space that aims to reivindicate our own music, which has evolved in some cases creating an unique sound.

After a while living in London, it came to me the idea of bringing Spanish bands to play here. With the help of some people, and getting a couple of contacts, I am happy to announce that I am bringing Triangulo de Amor Bizarro -so far one of the best noise rock bands in the moment- the 10th of May to play at The Legion, in Shoreditch, in an event which will be the first step of a project that involves local bands to do an enriching crossover of music scenes. This time, TAB will be playing with The Light Shines, The Confederate Dead and Temperatures, best of all, for FREE!!

Doors will open at 19.30, is there any best option to go trough a Sunday hangover?

I have created an event on facebook to do a viral thing, so hope to see you all there!

Our now sadly defunct-because-we’re-sold-out online shop, The Less Rain Super Center, is featured in iCatching, a new book by Singaporean publisher Page One.

Filter Forge is a Photoshop plug-in that lets you create your own filters using a Max MSP-like interface. Very handy to create seamless, photo realistic textures like this one:

The Mac version got released just now, with a 30% discount. User-created filters can be downloaded for free.

Storing Files in databases as a BLOB always seemed inherently daft to me. I wanted to be able to store user generated Files as URLs in the database, and let an HTTP Server serve them, so why is Hibernate storing BLOBs? Hibernates UserType allows conversion between ungainly classes such as java.net.URL or java.io.File and the somewhat pale and pasty datatypes of the database world.

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