The always entertaining and informative website Buzzfeed created this clever video that demonstrates how much food one can purchase with the equivalent of $5 US in various countries around the globe.
“How Much Food Can You Buy For $5 Around The World” examined the retail cost of bananas, rice, coffee, beer, Big Macs and more. Thought provoking stuff.
New York City subway riders have one more reason to avoid eye contact now that thirty more subway stations and platforms are equipped with both wireless voice and data services. Travelers can connect to free wifi (see below), use mobile phones, text and surf the web.
Newly covered stations—as of April 25th—range from 18th street to 96th street on Manhattan’s West Side, including Times Square and Rockefeller Center. The MTA expects to eventually cover all 241 stations in the system.
To connect to the free wifi service, riders must choose “FreewifibyHTCone” and endure ads.
The coming New York Wheel, which is scheduled to launch on the New York Harbor in May, 2016, will dwarf both the famous London Eye and the Singapore Flyer.
The 625-foot tall Ferris wheel, which will be situated near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, is expected to attract up to 4.5 million visitors each year for a 38-minute thrill ride.
Former shoe salesperson and current Google staffer Bri Hand created this wonderful, whimsical tourism ad campaign inviting extra-terrestrial travelers to drop by and visit Earth. The campaign consists of audio broadcasts and print advertizing that extolls the virtues that make our planet worth a visit, such as gravity, conviviality, science, humanity and electricity. I hope that somebody out there is paying attention.
The very imaginative folks at designhype have created a cleverly designed line of urban street and subway maps embossed on metal cuff bracelets. Metro Cuffs currently cover New York City, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Chicago. The next release in the series is Brooklyn. I want to see how they fit the Moscow metro system on one bracelet. You can purchase Metro Cuffs here.
This interesting infographic is from the folks at Write Your Novel, Now ! , which is an online writing coaching service (paid of course). The graphic is packed with lots of timely information about the recent growth in e-book publishing markets around the world. I have some doubts about the figures on the global e-book market. Do they make any sense? Did 4,000 e-book titles really generate $1.8 billion in Brazil. And did the UK actually produce one million e-book titles? But all in all, it’s worth a look.
TED-prize-winning French street artist JR is bringing his widely popular Inside Out Project to Times Square, New York City starting tomorrow. The public participation art project invites folks to take a self-portrait in a customized photo booth. The 3 foot by 4 foot B & W photo posters will be either displayed in Times Square or sent home with the sitter to be displayed in their home town.
Inside Out New York City will coincide with the world premiere of the documentary film Inside Out: The People’s Art Project at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film, which will also be shown on HBO in the U.S., covers the project’s visits to Israel, Palestine, France, Switzerland, Abu Dhabi and China, where 70,000 photo posters were taken.
The project’s photo booth truck will be in Times Square until May 10th, when it will then travel to the city’s other four boroughs.
You can discover more about the Times Square part of the project here and follow the ongoing events on Facebook.
Before he set out for the U.S. to promote his ongoing Inside Out Project, French street artist JR recently visited Berlin where he completed several large-scale new works. His Wrinkles of the City project explores both aging of individual Berlin residents and the transformation of the city over the past decades.
Mexico City architects Arquitectura 911sc and Fernanda Canales have brilliantly surrounded a century-old two-story, brick and stucco house with a concrete and glass frame creating a 21st century library and cultural center.
Situated in the southern district of Coyocán, the Elena Garro Center even includes the existing trees and landscaping from the old property into the complex.
According to the architects, ” The project is the idea of highlighting the existing house and making an ‘open library space. Thus, a transparent block draws books forward into the street and at the same time incorporates the trees inside.”
photos ©Sandra Pereznieto
The Last Bookshop is a charming short film that imagines a future time when physical books have disappeared. One day, a young boy’s digital entertainment fails, so he decides to explore abandoned areas of his town. On his wanderings, he finds the last standing bookshop. Inside, an old shop owner has been waiting twenty-five years for a customer.
This wonderful film was written and co-directed by Richard Dadd, and stars Alfred Hoffman as the shopkeeper and Joe Holgate as the boy.
