Tottenham Court Road tube station has a really interesting atmosphere right now. This granddaddy of tube stations is about to be engulfed in a huge redevelopment project in preparation for London's Crossrail. It's pretty dilapidated and today there were some amazing distressed billboards, in no-man's land between ads.
Soho, London, 6 August 2009.
We're in the middle of our biggest snowfall in London for 15 years.
There aren't any buses this morning (6 million people use them each day, so this is quite controversial). And there aren't any trains in and out of much of the capital, certainly from the southern inner suburbs like Camberwell where I live.
One of my main childhood memories of snow was the effect it had on the form of cars. How it would exaggerate features, and size, and smother other detail. This, and the gentleness of atmosphere that suddenly lands like a blanket over even a city. Out there right now people are trudging about just to experience the change, and have wide grins on their faces.
It'll surprise few of you that I've never really grown up. So if you're pretending to get on like a normal Monday, and think it's smart to fight through the snow to get to a desk, have fun out there.
But there's another way to separate the men from the boys. Revel in the snow and check out the The Movement Design Bureau 'guess that car' Flickr photoset. Click on the collage below and be the first to identify any of the cars you can. Feel free to argue.
The person we consider to demonstrate the highest degree of car nerd observation powers (apart from Joe) gets a day on our Segway (when the snow's melted).
Posted by Mark Charmer.
Amidst what some are describing as 'Carpocalypse' - where economic conditions for car makers are so tough, that even holier-than-holy Toyota is forecasting it will post its first ever loss, it's nice to spread a bit of cheer, and dream off into a fantasy land of Italian cars past, present, super, not so super... and, well, you get the idea.
'Dream - cars of the future since 1950' has been on display at the Padiglione Giovanni Agnelli di Torino Esposizioni since the 19th September. Thanks to some gentle nudging from our friends at Car Design News, the exhibition was extended until 28th December 2008 - which meant that we got to see it, on a trip to Turin last week.
Check out the flickr photo set below for the highlights - the cars really speak for themselves so we won't go on about it at length here, but suffice to say that if for any reason you happen to be in Turin over the next four days, do make sure you check it out in between Turkey and Christmas pudding.
Posted by Jospeh Simpson on 23rd December 2008
I picked up a great book on Friday from London's fabulous Design Museum bookshop. It's a Japanese magazine containing a wild range of cutout Japanese street scenes.
It surprised me to see something so physical coming out of somewhere so associated with electronics, mobile phones and all things digital. Or perhaps it's the ultimate convergence of origami and digital snapshots of the world around us.
Whatever, we all agreed it was brilliant fun. I especially love the cardboard van.
Posted by Mark Charmer.
In one of his more surreal moments, James Governor sent Thomas and I a note once that said it was "better to be interested than interesting". After an hour of bemusement I took his point, although Thomas remained(s?) slightly less convinced.
But I think I'm starting to get it. Joe and I had a really strange epiphany about eight months ago when we realised that the easiest way to find something we've written was to do a general Google search for the phrase, which would take us to our own blog articles. This, as you can imagine, was really exciting. But we didn't know why it happened so reliably - how certain articles we've written on Re*Move have really good page rankings. We don't have vast overall site traffic - peaking at perhaps five hundred unique visits per day. Dipping down to about 200 while I've had a broken arm and Joe's spent 2 months 'up the RCA' as we'd say, finishing his MPhil.
I got talking the other day with said Governor about this - and how I can't fathom out why we do well. They're all very specialist topics - but in a proper long tail way (sorry, geek term) we rank well on the things we really follow. Which is nice. I would feel uncomfortable ranking well on things I didn't know about. But it's nice to be high up when you know your stuff.
So here are two search phrases we rock on:
GOOGLE RANKING 4
"Zipcar Review"
Ever tried one of the groundbreaking car sharing systems that are being developed by the likes of ZipCar and UK-based StreetCar? Well a search on "Zipcar review" will see our article at number 4. Which is kinda satisfying I have to say. We're big fans but think they could develop their product and engage with their markets in much more direct, tailored ways. Let's just say more metro-marketing, less global br(l)and. Read our "ZipCar Review" and enjoy. Or hey, Google the phrase! See whether we go up or down.
GOOGLE RANKING 8
"Project Better Place"
Want to know the lowdown on Shai Agassi's $200 million effort to introduce electric car charging networks around the world? Well type "Project Better Place" into Google and today we're number 8. Shai's like a whirlwind of a mind and I can't decide whether he's about to change the world or become the next WebVan guy. Read my analysis that asks 'Is Project Better Place the Big Answer?'. Or Google the company name and see if we're still on the first page.
Kinda cool huh? In fact, so cool that I've decided to add both of these search performances to my Cool Wall.
Who knows how we'll perform in future. That's part of the excitement. I suspect the key is to try all the time to be interested rather than interesting. And writers always, as George Orwell pointed out, have a touch of egoism going on. So for that I apologise. A bit.
Mark Charmer is director of The Movement Design Bureau.
This is from my morning run around some leafy bits of West London - took my phone with me to capture some of the sights along the way. Sorry for the poor picture quality.
As ever, click on the picture to go to the original flickr set.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 13th May 2008
He did this ages ago, so apologies for not getting this up onto the site before now, but we've received our first contributed COOL WALL - from Thomas Bjelkeman Pettersson.
This is exactly the sort of thing we're looking for, giving a fantastic sense of insight into what's happening on the streets of Stockholm. So if anybody else (you know who you all are!) wants to join in, remember all you need to do is bung some shots up onto a Flickr account (if you haven't got one mail me, and you can have the password for mine) and we'll do the rest. You'll get financially rewarded should any of your photos end up being used commercially, and get the added benefit of getting your name up in lights...
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 11th May 2008
Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson is a co-founder of Akvo, the open source for water and sanitation. His flickr photostream can be found here.
As the sun appears to have finally come out in London, expect an increase in cool wall postings from both of us over the next few weeks, as the weather becomes more conducive to photography, and the more beautiful things (and people) that are worth photographing, come out to play in London. Read more about Cool walls here.
Click on the photo to go to the original flickr cool wall photoset.
Related articles:
Welcome to coolwalls
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 11th May 2008
