Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

In this week’s issue: cooking, creativity and chaos, bring me Billy T, bubble over with joyous vitality, leading light, is it innovation or is it theft?, looping with the Art Link, we’re all going to Womad and the quote of the week.

Cooking, creativity and chaos

What do Crazy Frog, French cuisine and the British racing industry have in common? David Walker has identified the common thread and draws some conclusions how New Zealanders can get a head start in the global economy. Drawing on the writings of Len Deighton, the ringtone industry, Trade Me and the Million Dollar Homepage, David reckons we have some advantages in Godzone if we’re open to the weirdness of the world. Check out his conclusions on our website. 

 

 

Bring me Billy T

Any day now TVNZ will be rolling out its shiny new ‘ondemand’ online television service and my spies tell me the broadcaster has done a great job pulling together some of the finest moments in its 26-year archive. We’ll know for sure when the service goes live—probably as soon as next week— and TVNZ says although some of the clips will require a credit card, others will be free. We can look forward to reacquainting ourselves with back issues of Radio With Pictures and a chap called Billy T. (Hat tip to Stacks Of Green)

 

Bubble over with joyous vitality

Decades before Viagra, “sexually weak” men could take advantage of the wonderful powers of radium. Delivered in a delicious cocoa butter coating, Vita Radium Suppositories were guaranteed harmless and “energisers for the entire nervous, glandular and circulatory systems”.

What next? How about radioactive toothpaste?

 

Leading light

 

Karl Willis is finding himself quite at home in Tokyo, where the former Tauranga lad is building a reputation as a digital artist. His Light Tracer invention is an ‘interactive drawing system’ where people can trace images in light, or even leave a likeness of themselves on the screen. It’s hard to describe but, as the pics and videos on his website show, very cool.

 

 

Is it innovation or is it theft?

The Economist knows a trend when it sees one, so it’s decided to set up a business unit to develop innovative online services. Sound promising? Check out Project Red Stripe’s website, which says the boffins at the Economist “abhor the concept of a closed system” and they’re turning to the rest of us to submit our ideas for truly innovative online services.

So it’s open collaboration? Well, not quite. The idea is that you send them your ideas, give them the right to use it “without monetary reward or compensation” and, uh, they’ll do the rest. You might get a six-month subscription to the Economist website. There’s no wiki where ideas are posted, no opportunity for ideas to get polished by the online community, no ownership of the ideas or even any indication that your input won’t be sold to someone else. If this is The Economist’s idea of an open system I wouldn’t like to find myself in their controlled environment.

It’s a different deal at Wired magazine. Last year Wired managed to regain ownership of the Wired News website, which had been owned by portal operator Lycos. Later this week its new website is expected to be launched (Boing Boing has a few screen grabs of the new site).

What can we expect? Just a redesign would seem like a lost opportunity for Wired, and it appears that the editors have bigger plans. They’re asking for ‘citizen journalists’ to join in. If you ever wanted your byline in Wired, now’s your chance.

At Idealog, we’ll be watching this experiment with interest—and we have some collaborative ideas of our own that we hope to unveil soon. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Looping with the Art Link

With new galleries springing up in Auckland all the time it can be difficult to know what’s going on. Stagecoach and Art News have a solution this Saturday: build your own schedule with the Art Link, guided bus tours that will run in a loop from 10am to 6pm carrying visitors to 14 galleries. Talks and special events are also planned. An Art Link pass is just $2 for unlimited trips.

 

We’re all going to Womad

It’s a big weekend in the ‘Naki as the Womad 2007 world music festival kicks off tomorrow. Three-day passes have sold out but there are still tickets for the gigs on Sunday night, including Don McGlashan and performers from the US, Israel, China, the UK, Portugal, Mexico, France and South Africa.

On Saturday, a bunch of Auckland vineyards host its second Kumeu Scarecrow Festival which includes scarecrow contests in the traditional, open and recycled categories, plus a collection of new artworks from Barry Lett, Jeff Thomson, Helen Pollock and others. And on Monday the Silo Theatre plays host to ‘a threatrical bootcamp’, with two plays directed by Oliver Driver and Michael Hurst featuring a new generation of New Zealand acting talent.

 

Quote of the week

“New Zealand is providing plenty of evidence of the future of business opportunity in renewable technologies. New Zealanders like to see themselves as leaders in innovation, so I challenge Kiwis to add elbow grease to elegant rhetoric and grab the opportunity”

—Daniel Batten in ‘Xiamen style’