MemoryMiner won the Macworld 2006 Best of Show Award– that fact alone should tell you something about its Web 2.0 prowess. Without going into too much detail (chuckle chuckle), MemoryMiner is a Digital Storytelling application used to discover the threads connecting peoples’ lives across time and place. An innovative desktop application (Mac and Windows) lets you annotate photos in order to specify who is in the picture, where the picture was taken, and when then photo was taken. Drag and drop audio, video, documents and URLs onto photos to add greater depth and context. Each photo thus becomes a frame in an endless storyboard which can be browsed by periods in a person’s life, where people overlap, by place, by time, or any combination. Enlist the help of friends and family in the annotation process using the MemoryMiner Web Annotation Service. MemoryMiner will notify your contacts via email, and all they require to contribute is a web browser. Best of all, their annotations are automatically retrieved into your desktop library. Share your libraries as self-contained MemoryMiner documents, or export gorgeous web sites to a CD, or via automatic upload to any web server. Either way, MemoryMiner replicates the experience of telling stories around a photo album, even when all the people involved can’t be in the same place at the same time.

The consensus seems to be that MemoryMiner has serious potential to transform and rapidly evolve the entire field of photography– in the words of John Schott who is the Chair of Media Studies at Carleton College, “I have studied the history of photography for over 30 years now, and if this program continues to develop and finds its uses and users, I’m predicting that it will go down as a key transformative moment in the evolution of photography. It’s a brilliant application of digital/database logic to photography as personal history and storytelling. I’m gettin’ it.” A couple of other things I’ll point you to: a great explanation of why John Fox created MemoryMiner and an interview Alan Graham (author, designer, consultant) had with Fox at Macworld 2006. Additionally, MM is big on goodwill– it gives grants to k-12 schools, and if you’re a Windows user, they’re looking for people to beta the new Windows version– just email info[AT]memoryminer.com for either. Hat’s off to Mr. Fox for developing such a groundbreaking Web 2.0 application.

I get a kick out of the new Knock Knock products; Knock Knock makes clever, witty, and most importantly, relevant stationery. These have ‘gift’ written all over them. Some of my favorites are the Paper E-Mail– because it lets e-mail-addicted people like me feel better about actually putting pen to paper to write someone a note; Bon Voyage– because, lets face it, who doesn’t need help packing for a trip, whether a weekend excursion or a grand voyage; and Don’t Kill The Pets– because it reminds me of what the pros use to make sure someone’s Great Pyrenees doesn’t chew through their $4,000 sofa. You can pick up these, and other great Knock Knock products at Urban Outfitters.

I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for the last 10 minutes trying to put the Deerhoof experience into words. Let’s start with the basics. In 1991, Greg Saunier joins a goth/metal band in San Francisco and a series of events not atypical of many band biographies, Deerhoof is formed. Saunier and bassist Rob Fisk quickly make a name for themselves in music circles as weird and eccentric musicians, even for the indie scene. Later, they meet the final member of their band, a recent transplant from Tokyo with no musical experience whatsoever, Satomi Matsuzaki. The rest, as they say, is history.

The first thing you notice after popping in their latest album, “Friend Opportunity,” is Matsuzaki’s distinctive cutesey Japanese voice. I was troubled at first because the music is stop and go, with pauses or transitions in unexpected places. Like when one of your favorite songs is on the radio and you are singing along only to be interrupted by loops or scratches and it turns out to be a remix. The music is so well done though, and so creative with interwoven symphonic compositions and sounds I still can’t identify, that you soon forgive any notion of ill-timed breaks. Pick up “Friend Opportunity” today, put it in your car CD player (or iPod), and start counting the seconds before a passenger asks you about it.

Above are the top five finalists for the annual Champagne Chair Award– the contest held every year by Design Within Reach where super-handy craftsmen (and woman) put together chairs from the cork, wire and foil off a champagne bottle. The winner wins a $500 DWR gift certificate (enough for a trash can or two) and their winning chair joins the other outstanding chairs on a nationwide studio tour. Voting closes on Friday , February 9th at 5pm PT and you can only vote once, so choose wisely. The Copenhagen Rockegg chair (far left) by Brandy Shih has my vote!

It’s tough to categorize Ray Fenwick, a young and hugely promising cartoonist, illustrator, typographer out of Canada. When forced to choose a definition for himself, he jokingly prefers to give something like, “One Who Draws on a Regular Basis, Whether For Purpose of Sharing or Merely For Self-Gratification.” Personally, I prefer to just leave words out of it and let my eyes sort out exactly what it is that Mr. Fenwick spends his time doing, because he’s pretty darn good at everything. His illustrations and musings are honest and sweetly sarcastic, and I’m super buzzed about his typography which is powerful, creative, AND fuctional (a trait sadly lacking in font design these days). While he’s spent a little over a year on his Hall of Best Knowledge comic strip (which ran exclusively in “The Coast,” Halifax’s weekly paper) he recently retired the strip to focus on his new job of managing a soon-to-be letterpress. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Ray is also incredibly funny; the online magazine LAB has a hilarious interview with him up right now. Check it out if you’re into that sort of thing.