about discovering our team's mobile snapshots

With a workforce that stretches across the world, JESS3 has the unique capability of including views from people of all backgrounds, from all sorts of neighborhoods. Each week, we will pick a selection of mobile uploads from our team members to showcase the world through the JESS3 team's eyes.

about Facebook 500 by Fitz

about what a week at JESS3 looks like (July 19 - 23)

On Monday, our interactive ninjas (Ben, Adam, Travis and Nick) returned home from Pitchfork in Chicago, where we worked with @MomentumWW on another successful data visualization installation / Media Wall. Another part of our team (Jesse, Eric, Alix & Leslie) went over to @NASA to talk big ideas with @BethBeck. Leslie, Alix and Eric then stopped by the TechCocktail offices for some power pow wows.

On Tuesday, we headed up to Baltimore where Jesse, Eric, Nick and Mike met up and talked about our Arlington County Fair strategy (read: operation JESS3 Fashion extravaganza). Also in Baltimore, Leslie gave a social media talk to the Maryland State Medical Society. Meanwhile, back at the Lab, Adam worked on our BP Oil Spill Plugin site oil.jess3.com to update it with some key new features. Check it out!

On Wednesday, Facebook made an epic announcement -- that they had hit 1/2 billion users. Even more special? They are featuring the stories of their users on a new dedicated application / page called stories.facebook.com, which the JESS3 team was proud to help design and develop closely with Facebook and Involver. That evening, Jimmy Fallon made a quick mention of our Ex-blocker Plugin on his Late Night with Jimmy Fallon opening monologue.

On Thursday, our own farmhand and co-founder Leslie headed up to the Farm Bureau Federation where she participated on a panel about "Urgent Issues and New Opportunities for Agricultural Communications." The panel was moderated by famed Chicago host Orion Samuelson (over 58 years on the air talking ag!), Jerry Hagstrom of Congress Daily and Capital Press and Dr. Jim Evans. Her JESS3-designed presentation "Why Social Media" has been viewed a combined 8,000+ times and was picked up by TheNextWeb in both English (by Brad McCarty) and Polish (by Aleks Grynis).

On Friday, we welcomed our newest star intern, Lauren, while former-intern-turned-Producer Mike spent time planning for JESS3's first pop up retail venture at the Arlington County Fair (August 18-22), looking for vendors to get t-shirts, posters, postcards, lighters, balloons and various other goodies printed. Not to be outdone by Jimmy Fallon, Leslie talked about the ex-blocker on Canada's CKNW "The Morning News With Philip Till." And to start the weekend on a high note, Shane Richmond of the UK Telegraph referenced Jesse’s “Why Foursquare Sucks” presentation in a blog about confusion over the geosocial platform.

Written by: Alix McAlpine | Director of Marketing, JESS3

about the Obesity and Hunger Infographic

In an effort to raise awareness about both the need for simple data visualizations to demonstrate the spread of Hunger in America, Anne Mei Bertelsen of Mai Strategies and CauseShift collaborated with JESS3 to create a data-rich infographic which shows areas of hte country which have both high levels of food insecurity and high rates of obesity.

Bertelsen used the graphic as her main illustration to drive home to point in her article on the Huffington Post: "Visualizing Hunger and Its Impact: Why We Need a Hunger Data Consortium", which she concluded with the following call to arms:

"It's time we stop hoarding data in silos -- accessible only to a few. We need to create a Hunger Data Consortium and let everyone and anyone -- the government, non-profits, the media and interested individuals -- use it to test hypotheses and create new approaches to ending hunger in America."

about "Boy" a New Zealand film

Taika Waititi’s new film, Boy, is apparently the best New Zealand film since Once Were Warriors.



The year is 1984, and on the rural East Coast of New Zealand Thriller is changing kids lives. Inspired by the Oscar nominated Two Cars, One Night, BOY is the hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age tale about heroes, magic and Michael Jackson.

BOY is a dreamer who loves Michael Jackson. He lives with his brother ROCKY, a tribe of deserted cousins and his Nan.

Boys other hero, his father, ALAMEIN, is the subject of Boys fantasies, and he imagines him as a deep sea diver, war hero and a close relation of Michael Jackson (he can even dance like him). In reality hes in the can for robbery.
When Alamein returns home after 7 years away, Boy is forced to confront the man he thought he remembered, find his own potential and learn to get along without the hero he had been hoping for.

Starring Te Aho Eketone-Whitu, James Rolleston, Taika Waititi

Directed/Written by Taika Waititi ('Eagle Vs Shark', TV's 'Flight of the Conchords')











www.boythemovie.co.nz

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it's on bit torrents, I saw a link on thepiratebay.org

about Disney's "Epic Mickey" Wii video game

Disney Epic Mickey is an upcoming Mickey Mouse video game designed by Warren Spector, with 2d cinemas by Powerhouse Animation Studios, Inc. and developed by Junction Point Studios for the Wii console, using Emergent Game Technologies' Gamebryo Engine. Epic Mickey is part of an effort by The Walt Disney Company to re-brand the Mickey Mouse character by moving away from his current squeaky clean image and reintroducing the mischievous side of his personality. Spector has been collaborating with Walt Disney Feature Animation and Pixar in conjunction with the project.





















So the word is out, Warren Spector is making Epic Mickey. Old news. What you should really be excited about is that he’s badly wanting to make a new DuckTales game. In a recent interview, Spector explains that when he first met with Disney, he was hoping he’d get to work with Huey, Dewey, Louie.

They asked if I would be interested in doing a licensed project. And I said, “Yeah, I’ve been wanting to do one.” I gave the design keynote at GDC in 2003 or 2004, about licenses and sequels, and how you can do creative stuff in that context. And so I was like, “Yeah! Give me Uncle Scrooge! Give me Duck Tales! Come on!”

…I want to do a Duck Tales game. Convince the world that a Duck Tales game needs to be made. I can’t convince anybody at Disney to let me do a Duck Tales game. How can that be?

Read more: http://www.thetanooki.com/2009/10/25/warren-spector-really-wants-to-make-a-new-ducktales-game/

about Calle 13 - Electro Movimiento

this guy is apparently the latin Kanye.

about scvngr

Scvngr is a game about doing challenges at places. If you search for Scavenger on google, you will notice they bought out the ad space pushing people to their site.



Smart right?

about Why Social Media, a Slideshare Presentation

If you're still wondering why Social Media is impossible to ignore in today's world, our very own social media guru Leslie Bradshaw has put together a handy little slideshow showcasing crucial tips and information on the topic. Read it, learn it, love it, share it, live it:

about Ex-Blocker Plugin Media Coverage / Update

http://blockyourex.com/

It’s important to have a little fun once in a while, and that’s exactly what we did when we created the Ex-Blocker.

As we shared about a week ago, it was inspired by a Brooklyn Happy Hour with our friend at Stuff Hipsters Hate, Brenna Ehrlich (who also writes for CNN and Mashable), we created a fun plug in that removes all mentions of that certain someone you never want to see again from search results, blogs, articles, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else they might pop up.

Everyone has known or has been that one person who can’t just walk away from a breakup, and let’s face it, it’s never easy, the Ex-Blocker just helps us a little further along the way on the path of heartbreak recovery. Since launching via Brenna and Andrea's Netiquette column at CNN on July 7th and as of midnight 7/22/10, the Ex-Blocker plugin has been downloaded 3,397 and "liked" 1,781 on Facebook. We have also been contacted by numerous radio, print and TV outlets; look for the interviews in the coming days! And before we rattle off some of our favorite clippings, we want to share one last exciting development: Jimmy Fallon mentioned it on his show last night (see 6:06 in this clip on Hulu).

All 59 media hits garnered so far can be found on our Delicious account here; some of the "best of" are included below:

• Dakshana Bascaramurty of The Globe and Mail: “In the age of Web 2.0, purging all traces of a former lover from your life requires a lot more than a clinical procedure. For those who can’t stop themselves from creeping their exes on Facebook, obsessively reading their tweets or Googling them, the fix is in. Washington-based creative group Jess3 launched Ex-Blocker last week.”
• Erica Pearson of The NY Daily News elaborates to the readers: “Firefox and Chrome users can type in the names and social networking usernames of up to five exes and install the blocker, making every image and mention of them disappear. While expunging memories à la Jim Carrey in ”Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” may still be out of reach, the plug-in will eliminate errant Google search results and random postings on friends’ Facebook pages.”
• Tony Payne of Yahoo’s Associated Content jokes a bit: “ (…) it doesn’t actually remove them from the internet and do some kind of magic disappearing act on them, but it does prevent any searches that are done on your computer from including anything to do with your ex. This is a great bonus (I guess) for those shunned partners who can’t get over a breakup, and who feel the need to constantly search for their ex’s profile on Facebook and other social networking sites, to see what they have been up to”.
• Chris Matyszczyk, author of CNET's Technically Incorrect column (a column title we love, btw): “The Ex-Blocker home page is a little light on how it might actually get rid of those who have caused you pain, grief, or merely bankruptcy of pocket and ideas. However, at the time of writing, it boasts that it is busy removing more than 2,556 exes from the Internet. Which is volunteer work of a truly elevated nature.” · Michael Hines, assistant editor at Trend Hunter boasts:” The Ex-Blocker is a browser plugin that blocks you from looking at or seeing your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend. This has to be one of the most useful plugins of all time.”
• Chris Pirillo, widely-followed internet entrepreneur explains: “Logging in to Facebook and having your ex’s face sitting on top of a message saying “Add as a friend!” might cause scars to rip right off of still-healing wounds. It’s painful to have to look at their name or face every time you click over to a new page, isn’t it? Ex-blocker will help."
• Castina at Popcrunch says: “Drawing on the popularity of a Firefox tool developed in May to remove all traces of teen star Justin Bieber from the ‘Net, “Ex-Blocker” evaluates web pages, blogs, and social networking profiles and eliminates all mentions of the former object of your affection.”
• Jezebel quips: "But even those old enough to choose their own religion may have wished they could wipe an ex's name off the face of the earth. And now they can — online, at least."
• Gizmodo uses a iconic image from the movie the Break-Up -- capturing the once-coupled-IRL Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, when they say: "The Ex-Blocker is a plugin for Firefox and Chrome that literally filters your ex out of the internet for you. Simply feed it their first and last names, their Twitter username, their Facebook profile info and their blog URL, and it takes care of the rest. Sure, photos can slip through the cracks, I'm sure. And you'll have to set up an email filter yourself if you want to cut off contact completely. But this might just stop you from seeing that picture of the one person who used to love you that would remind you that your time with them was the best days of your life that you will never, ever get back because you are stupid and selfish and fucked up badly in a way that is completely irreparable. And that would be, like, a total downer."

Written by:
Alix McAlpine | Director of Marketing, JESS3
Leslie Bradshaw | President & Co-founder, JESS3

about Flipboard

This reminds me of Alltop meets Feltron's personal annual report meets friendfeed. It calls to attention the Lame design of most social networks. We users want a brighter layout like this. Let's not look back!

about Facebook Stories

http://stories.facebook.com/



Well, the big day is here: Facebook has reached 500 million users. To put that into perspective, by recent estimates, there are 309,723,000 people currently living in the U.S. It’s no wonder that there are nearly 65 million people "liking" things every day and more than 25 billion pieces of content shared each month (e.g., web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.)

To celebrate this enormous milestone, Facebook and the JESS3 team designed and built a new section of Facebook called "Stories," which invites the 500 million users to share how Facebook has changed their lives. Located at stories.facebook.com, this new application offers the option to either sort stories by location or by topics ranging from love, to natural disasters, to lost and found, to religion, to politics and many others. The most "liked" stories then appear at the bottom of the page for all to see.

JESS3 worked closely with the Facebook design team to make the new section fit the site’s signature aesthetic seamlessly, as well as explore other, more futuristic concepts. These additional concepts will continue to inform the evolving look and feel of the Stories site for months to come. Check out some of our favorite below:

For more info, check out Facebook’s blog "500 Million Stories" by CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg.

And, earlier this week, Kara Swisher covered the exclusive announcement on AllThingsD: Exclusive: Facebook Will Announce 500 Million Users Next Week With “Facebook Stories".

Check out some of our early concepts,