With the Google+ Hangouts API out of preview, Google asked us to take a look and see what we can hack together. What excites us is the possibility of building games and toys on top of a baked-in social platform with multi-user videochat.

In this two week sprint, we’ve tasked ourselves with translating the classic game of treasure hunt into a fun, fast-paced social experience mashing-up Google Street View and Google+ Hangouts.

The idea is to drop the members of a hangout in to an exciting location somewhere in the world, for example, the Palace of Versailles. The location data is served up via Google Maps Street View, which now takes you inside some of the most famous buildings in the world.

Once everyone is on location, they’ll be asked to locate a unique piece of art or object as quickly as possible. Clues along the way will give everyone an idea of where to head next. The first person to virtually locate the piece of art or object inside that location wins!

Technically speaking, it’s a beast to develop a game in two weeks. The team of developers at Use All Five have to write all the game logic (who’s present, who left, everyones map location, etc.), as well as synchronize data between Hangout members.

If time permits, we have a few tricks up our sleeve and hope to include them.

Follow us on Google+ (or Twitter or Facebook) for up-to-date progress reports and blog posts detailing our process and solutions. We plan on posting code snippets and demos as we go, and would love to have you join in.

This is the second year in which we (Use All Five) have participated in this event, so it’s extremely rewarding to see the growth and shifts in students from one year to the next.

The first thing that struck me about these students, compared to last year, was the passion and fire for programming. These kids knew how to develop and program in Javascript, Processing, CSS, HTML, Unity, and PHP. If they didn’t know how to program yet, or they felt weak in their programming skills, they said they were going to push themselves harder in their free time to master it.

On top of this passion for programming, most of the kids were fluent in another creative talent. I saw beautiful photography, funny/quirky videos with perfect lighting and beautiful cinematography, as well as illustrations that made me smile.

Of course, both last year and this year, the kids had a very strong design background: typography skills, understanding of form, layouts, colors and more. I’m impressed and amazed with where Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, and chair Henri Lucas are taking the department. It’s extraordinary and groundbreaking, compared to the other design and art schools around the country.

What’s being created at UCLA DMA are the perfect creatives. You have students who can design and program a website or a mobile app, but also design and compile a book of your writings. This high level of creative prowess and concepting, with an extreme knowledge of digital possibilities, will serve large dividends to these future students.

They’re not perfect yet. They still have a lack in selling themselves and their ideas, but that doesn’t scare me, they’ll learn that the hard way – by joining the real world and being forced to fight. I hope I see some of these individuals launch their own start-ups or agencies, like we did when we graduated 5 years ago.

Keep up the great work everybody!

11 Ways to Visualize Changes Over Time – A Guide
January 7, 2010
Deal with data? No doubt you’ve come across the time-based variety.

Great products are triumphs of taste
February 1, 2010
You need to understand what “great” means in a big picture sense, not just in your chosen field.

Sunk Costs: An invisible, pervasive peril
February 15, 2010
Many of my mistakes can be traced back to a failure to recognize and appreciate “sunk cost.”

Mike Maples Talks Venture Capital And Thunder Lizards
February 21, 2010
Small startups can be hugely disruptive, and have proportionally huge exits.

Theory of Change
March 14, 2010
A blog post on the importance of working backwards.

Native App Or In-Browser Website: Which Is Right For Your Brand?
April 6, 2010
This is still a huge debate for brands and websites, even as we enter 2011.

The Secret to Designing an Intuitive UX
April 8, 2010
A look at matching the mental model to the conceptual model.

Online & Real Life Social Networks
April 11, 2010
Paul Adams presented Google’s research on the differences between online and real-world social networks

Attention Brands: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What You Build
May 10, 2010
Today the product itself has become the primary advertising channel — it convinces people based on its utility to them.

Why Creatives Are Confused
May 28, 2010
If they weren’t confused they’d be crazy.

(Video) Skills Of The Rockstar Planner: Intuitive Problem Solving Share
June 14, 2010
The often amorphous practice of intuitive problem solving is defined and examined by leading voices within the planning community.

John Sculley On Steve Jobs, The Full Interview Transcript
October 14, 2010
An interesting, and thorough, interview with John Sculley on the subject of Steve Jobs.

Nike Turns London Into a Game Board to Get People Running
October 29, 2010
Nike asked Wieden+Kennedy to get young people excited about running. W+K said forget ads, let’s make a game.

6 Predictions for Digital Advertising in 2011
December 22, 2010
Six predictions for digital advertising in 2011.

A big advantage of the web world is experimenting, testing, and changing little things in order to achieve better results. It’s not a pretty process, with a lot of messes spreader across the Internet, but it works.

For example, the Atlantic has their main website at TheAtlantic.com, but they also have an active Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook with unique methods at each designations for communicating to their audiences. It’s a matter of preference. I’m a follower of their Facebook page because of their clear, quick links to news that matters, plus interesting commentary by other followers.

However, it’s their Tumblr that excites me the most. They took an easy risk of launching a stripped down, ad-free version of their site to give readers a streamlined news source with powerful quotes, stories, images, videos and discussion points that differ mightily from their Twitter and Facebook.

On top of that, they have thought-provoking writers with their own min-blogs, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages. I’m a huge fan of Andrew Sullivan, who has been killing it as a blogger for The Atlantic with his own unique point of view and constant quality posts.

These tentacles reach across the internet and net The Atlantic a cool 100,000+ dedicated individuals who are interested in what The Atlantic says and links too. They can continue to feed this audience their news and links to the Atlantic website, which drive bigger page view numbers and advertising profits.

They built their following with a confident, experimental approach that more publications and firms should be mimicking in order to build an audience, as well as profit.

The first project was Nebul.us, the social network startup with a data visualization core. The article goes through the details of the first major update, which we’ve been cooking up the past few months since the service launched.

Read the FastCompany article about Nebul.us →

The second project mentioned by FastCompany was Morphopedia. In the article, writer Alissa Walker breaks down the deficiencies and common problems seen in Architect websites. However, she shines a spotlight on our encyclopedia website we designed and built for Morphosis, called Morphopedia. She calls Morphopedia “a fun Wiki-like listing of projects that’s infinitely easier to use”

Read the FastCompany article about Morphopedia →

We’re pleased to announce the full SlyFox font family, with two faces – light and medium. We’re charging $25 for the complete set; we hope you find this a genuinely great deal for the countless late nights we’ve put in to this bad boy. Preview the full font here: PDF preview of SlyFox Font.

If you love the font, start your purchase by clicking the Buy Now button below!
After your purchase is complete, a download link will be sent to your e-mail.

Name: SlyFox Full Font
Price: $25.00
[wp_eStore_buy_now:product_id:1:end]

Follow us on Twitter for more fun announcements!

Today we are happy to announce the release of SlyFox [ Download ] — a free font, caps only, but sexy nevertheless.

The font is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this blog post if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the font as you wish.

Enjoy this week’s links, and please e-mail or twitter at us if you find anything else interesting on the webs.

Authenticity = Success

We come across too many new brands that don’t feel right for a company we know well. This is because these brands are not authentic. They are manufactured; they have nothing to do with what the company is really about – and too much to do with hyperbole and wanting to impress.

faked euphoria- a microsoft store

On the subject of authenticity, you can’t fake it — just learn from Microsoft in this embarrassing video! There’s something deeper at work in the Apple store that Microsoft can’t copy, don’t copy – innovate.

Nussbaum on Design, Disruption and Innovation

We now have the technology to engage consumers, learners, drivers, patients – everyone – and make them part of a process that generates new options, services and experiences. Of course, that means “experts” have to give up some control and that includes managers, designers, branders (is that a term?).

Brewing a Better Rating System

Love this idea, simple, fun, and strong.

What Startups Are Really Like

“I’ve been surprised again and again by just how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence.”

Shocking Barack. What just happened?

A perfect product launch for the 21st Century?

Utility Marketing: Usefulness Creates Connections

However, by employing utility, brands can effectively “walk the walk”. Manifesting their attributes through functions, interactions and behaviors. Transforming abstract concepts into tangible characteristics. Converting talk into action.

Anyways, we have some exciting announcements this week, so stay tuned, it’s going to get a little crazy around here.

The hand-drawn animals of Nacho Gil

“No programming or 3D or whatsoever,” was used to create these illustrations claims Nacho Gil. It’s truly a peculiar project where the philosophy that lies beneath the sketches is the face of the animal which is designed with interconnected vectors.

Designing Your Systems

A number of studies have revealed that game playing triggers dopamine release in the brain, a finding that makes sense, given the instrumental role that dopamine plays in how the brain handles both reward and exploration.

Culture Trumps Influencers

In your business, what is the accepted cultural convention? If you get the right fix on this, you can flip it on its head and make it your own. Or flip it on its ass and slap it like a newborn. Choose your metaphor, y’all. A must buy book.

Dutch Design Masters, in Their Own Words

A delicious video archive for anyone interested in Dutch design, featuring studio visits with Philips, MVRDV, and 15 others.

Making Your Customers Smarter

Many brands don’t seem to want smarter customers, they are afraid all that extra effort will simply go to waste or benefit a competitor, not so Intelligentsia Coffee. We’re big fans of Intelligentsia, I just wish they’d have a faster option for us busy folks

Social Media: The Need For Measurement

Really, social media marketing is no different to other forms of marketing in that it must eventually demonstrate value and be accountable.

4 questions with author Jeanne Bliss

The foundation of every beloved company is their purposeful decision to believe. They believe in their employees. This frees them from rules, regulations and processes that take away ingenuity and inventiveness and spirit.