Guinness 250 Years Celebrations

Unless you've been hiding under a stone lately, you'll be well aware that this September 24th marks the first Arthur’s Day. This is the annual celebration of the founding of Guinness. Of course this year is particularly special as it's the quarter century Anniversary, so there's a whole summer of events and activities ahead of us. The important one, however, is the day itself, and the incredible events that will be taking place.

Tomorrow tickets go on sale at 9am, through Ticketmaster, for gigs at four venues and 28 pubs, all of whom will be playing host to some seriously cool international stars, here in Dublin to help us celebrate this new national holiday. Tickets for the four venues; Tripod, Vicar St, Whelan’s and The Academy, will be on sale for €17.59, and tickets to the 28 pubs will be €9. Also, all proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the Arthur Guinness Fund. Nice one!

So what do you get for this charitable donation? Well, if you're lucky enough to grab a ticket(s), the line-ups look like this:

Vicar Street
Sugababes, Razorlight, Black Swan Effect, Reverand and the Maker, The Blizzards

The Academy
The Kooks, Richard Hawley, Imelda May

Tripod
Calvin Harris, Jamie Cullum, Soul 11 Soul with Caron Wheeler , Republic of Loose, Mongrel

Whelan’s
David Gray, The Enemy, The Wombats, The Undertones, Lisa Hannigan, Hot Rats(Supergrass)

In the pub venues punters will have the unique opportunity to see two well known artists and a special guest in the surroundings of one of Dublin's best pubs. Details of these artists and special guests will be kept secret until the night itself.

Each gig will kick off at 17:59 in tribute to Arthur Guinness himself, and the signing of the 9,000 year lease on the St. James's Gate brewery.

So what are you waiting for? Set your alarm, switch on a reminder, tell your best friend, send a tweet, write a blog or yell out your window. Whatever you do, just remember to get a ticket!

Follow the build up on Facebook or enjoy a quick teaser from this video:

Pizza Hut iPhone App

Pizza Hut in the US have just launched a new iPhone App allowing you to order directly from your phone. The App is free and provides an incredibly comprehensive suite of features, allowing complete customisation of you order down to the smallest detail. The interface is touch as usual but goes a step further, utilising the iphone’s multi-touch abilities for choosing you pizza size and dragging and dropping on your desired toppings. Another funny little feature is that shaking the phone will "sauce your wings".

The App offers an interesting couple of further additions in the form of a virtual fridge with coupons pinned on it for your local Pizza Hut, and a cool little game called “Hut Racer”.

Though I kind of wonder why I'm telling you all of this, you could just watch this ridiculously detailed YouTube video...



The App was developed by IMC2

From Pizza Hut’s press release:
The pizza ordering section allows consumers to virtually build their own pizza by choosing a type of crust in the scroll wheel, “pinching” to select size, and dragging-and-dropping toppings onto the pizza, all with visual confirmation. If an overeager pizza customer adds too many toppings, the pizza explodes and toppings go flying across the screen with an alert to make their pizza happier with fewer toppings. Toppings are easily deleted by clicking them in a generated text list. To customize for half and half, users tilt the phone left or right and the toppings move to one side or the other. When finished, the user sees a visual representation of what their pizza will look like.

Augmented Reality: Museum Guide

This is the second time Augmented Reality has done this to me! About a month ago one of our Creative Directors, Marty, gave a Friday Session presentation on AR. Afterwards I mentioned that I didn't think it'd be long before online shops were using the technology for clothes shopping (work out your size, let you see garment on you etc.). Sure enough 3 days later I found someone already doing it.

So when I posted about the 'Augmented Reailty: New York Subway Map' I shouldn't have thought that anything different would happen. In that case I speculated that AR would be perfect for galleries or exhibitions. Well here's a video of an Augmented Reality system current being tested for the Paris Science Museum. Unfortunately you may want to turn your sound down (sorry).

Street Performance World Championships

The Street Performance World Championships recently did a corporate evening that I was lucky enough to be invited along to. Little did I realise I'd be made look like a real 'dummy'....

Kings of Concrete 2009

Just saw this over on Irish Street Art and it had to be shared.


Next weekend (25th & 26th July) over 20 different writers from all over Europe will be coming to Dublin for the annual Kings of Concrete Street Festival. In a complete blur of colour, sound and movement, this years two day event will transform Wood Quay from the everyday, into a canvas of art installations. Just some of the events taking place will include Breakdance Battles, MC Battles, Free Running and Skateboarding.

This is the 4th year the event is taking place and is expected to draw over 10,000 people during the two days. This is a free public event hosted by Dublin City Council, so there's no excuse not to get yourself down on at least one of the days. Check out a full event listing here.

To get you in the mood, check out this video from last year...



Cheers to Andy for this!