Everyone knew that Avatar was a technically advanced, but you will probably be surprised at the amazing fusion of performance and technology. The whole special is brilliant and if you liked the movie you will enjoy this a lot. The real treat though was how James Cameron was using essentially an augmented reality camera to shoot the scenes, in other words he’s looking through a virtual camera in which he can see the combination of the real world actors inside the virtual world he has created. In many ways an advance on the old virtual reality helmets that were all the rage in the 80′s.

I think the fact we can all watch things like this on the internet weeks after a blockbuster has come out is a testament to the way the internet works, maybe also an indication that DVDs are going to have to raise the bar if they want to stay relevant.

If you are tired Bay Area conferences where you hear the same old cheerleaders in what has become an increasingly incestuous web 2.0 echo chamber you need to check out the PSFK conference in San Francisco next week. This is sure to be a very creative and inspiring conference with great people from creative and successful companies in the real world, like Virgin America, Method, Modernista, Apple, and NASA. My blog buddy from Ogilvy 360, Rohit from the Influential Marketing blog will be there i’m sure signing books as well.

This is the confirmed speaker list:

Adrian Ho, Zeus Jones
Amit Gupta, Photojojo
Andrew Hoppin, NASA
Charles Ogilvie, Virgin America
Chris Riley, Apple

Colin Nagy, Attention
Ed Cotton, Influx Insights / BSSP
Eric Corey Freed, Organic Architect
Ezra Cooperstein, Current TV

Frank Striefler, TBWA/Media Arts Lab
Gareth Kay, Modernista
George Murphy, Modo-Group
George Parker, Adscam / Author

Jean-Marie Shields, Starbucks
Jen Bekman, 20×200
Jeremy Townsend, Ghetto Gourmet
John Pollard, Microsoft
Josh Handy, Method
Josh Morenstein, fuseproject
Kevin Allison, Financial Times

Liz Dunn, FunnyOrDie.com
Lynn Casey, Team Noesis
Mark Lewis, DDB
Max Schorr, Good Magazine
Nate Pence, Method
Rohit Bhargava, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence / Author

Just heard of this new service called Plurk which is a similar “microblogging” service rather like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku etc. According to Venture Beat it launched in January this year and seems to be targeting a more teenage demographic.

bub.blicio.us asks the question “is Plurk another Twitter?” and in many ways it is, it’s a lifestreaming/microblogging platform with friends and fans etc. The one major difference that I see in Plurk is it’s “Karma” measure, and that is one of the only reasons why I think it will be interesting to watch what happens. Karma is essentially a measure of your level of participation in the Plurk system, and it’s the kind of explicit feedback that I think can fuel the growth of social systems. One of the reasons that Yelp is so successful is it has multiple feedback mechanisms that reward and recognize the right activity in the social network, and therefore encourages more of that activity. If you reward the right “value creating” activities on your social network you set up very powerful virtuous cycles.

Mind you, as bub.blicio.us also pointed out there is no apparent business model or revenue model, agreed, but what else is new.

Oh, you can find me on Plurk here

UPDATE: Looks like Plurk is the new twitter… it’s down

A genius typeface made out of Post It Notes, I wonder if 3M would have to get a cut of this if it ended up as a font

Via Ffffound