Apparently the legendary video game Pacman is 30 years old and Google are commemorating it with a Doodle. What is remarkable about this customary logo change by Google is that this seems to be the first interactive one.

It’s quite an impressive demonstration which Adobe is using to directly prove that Steve Jobs and Apple wrong. Judging by the video, they might have successfully done that. One thing to note however is that the phone used by Adobe in this demo has performance capabilities much better than regular mobiles, so it would be somewhat unfair to compare it with the phones most of us carry today.

But it does beg a question on what should change: The mobile device or the web? Should device makers, including Apple, make higher performing devices to accommodate Flash or should the web completely move away from technologies such as Flash so that mobile users also get the full experience? One thing is certain, the mobile “web-war” is certainly far from over.

Here is a very creative outdoor advert I noticed at Old Street today. It features a full-scale model of the Nissan’s urban SUV, the Qashqai, seemingly balanced on a wall – How cool is that? Perhaps it’s another sign that this is truly the year of 3D and not necessarily limited to the screen.

Now, it must be noted that there is no statement officially linking the suspected new website- Thisdayonline.net to Thisday Newspapers. It is possible that the design used on thisdayonline.net isn’t about to be their new homepage design or does not belong to Thisday at all. But the fact that Thisdayonline.com (the current main site) was  for a short time redirecting to Thisdayonline.net (as reported in Oo’s blog) is strong evidence that there are indeed plans to overhaul the homepage and this is a likely design round. That aside, there are two things that I have discovered to be very clear about Thisdayonline.net:

• it is powered by blogging CMS WordPress
• it uses a free theme called ‘the beeb’

There seems to be part of the problem already. I have nothing against using downloaded themes but if  an organisation the size of Thisday can’t develop their own unique design, it shows a huge lack of creativity on their part. I’m sincerely hoping that Thisday doesn’t go ahead and commission this “new” design just to save them the enormous embrassment, and possibly complaints, they will receive for stealing. The current Thisday website, to me, is an absolute mess. Incidentally, it was another design copy of what the CNN website looked like at the time Thisdayonline.com was launched. Perhaps they should learn from previous mistakes and decide against to ripping-off the design of another global news organisation.

Photo: DesignFootball.com

The logo clearly does justice to the two host nations by representing their national colours in a flowery design. It also manages to still have a very visible representation of football yet maintain the blossoming plant effect.  The natural organic flow of the logo makes it very refreshing to look at and gives a very friendly and welcoming feeling. Perhaps this will even be appreciated more as the positive words of recent times seem to be “green” and “organic”. The official slogan "Creating History Together" goes very well with the visual theme of unity and growing together depicted in the logo. Credit to Portuguese agency Brandia Central for the design.

Personally, I really like it a lot and would say it is the best sport related identity (London Olympics 2012, I’m looking at you) I have seen in a long time. My only criticism may be that it would be hard to see this work on a single colour or 2D variant. It relies too much and the high-colour bevelled appearance.

Anyway, here’s an animation probably to convince the many people who may have initial reservations about the identity:

I will post a Photoshop tutorial of how I did it in the near future.

Around this time last week, every Nigerian football supporter must have been looking forward to the weekend because by the end of it, Nigeria would have played her two biggest games of the year one after the other. On one hand, the Super Eagles (a name which just doesn’t feel right to say anymore) were playing their last group game for the 2010 World Cup qualifiers. Qualification for South Africa was not in their hands as they not only had to beat Kenya in Nairobi, they had to also hope that group leaders Tunisia would lose to Mozambique in order to qualify. Very slim chance for Nigeria indeed and Tunisia were clearly the favourite to grab the ticket even among the most optimistic ‘naija’ supporter. On the other hand, the Golden Eaglets (another outdated nickname but maybe perhaps more appropriate) were on course to win the Under-17 Youth World Cup on home soil. Nigeria had won the tournament before, and seem to have pedigree in the competition always reaching the final stages. More-so, being the host and with the team displaying some excellent skill in previous macthes, the Eaglets were the clear favourites for the final and the cup.

Funny how 48 hours changes things isn’t it? Nigeria dramatically beat Kenya 2-3 on Saturday and Tunisia did their part to cock things up for themselves by bizarrely losing for the first time in the entire qualification series to Mozambique. It means the Super Eagles will be going to the World Cup afterall against all odds. Many will say that they didn’t deserve to qualify, but I think they deserve some credit for the luck they had. With that positive result, expectation and spirits must have been high going into Sunday’s U-17  final in Abuja where the Golden Eaglets were on course to retain their own title. It wasn’t to be though as they failed to beat Switzerland losing 0-1. It seems their luck quota ran out on Saturday as they were the better team on the night. They too should be proud of their efforts.  As I reflect on Nigeria’s big football weekend, it’s fair to say it was mixed although I’m sure most fans would still choose the senior team make the World Cup rather than being crowned “teenage champions of the world” if we had to choose one outcome.

I, for one, didn’t pay much attention to the U-17 tournament mainly because of the reputation we had for fielding over-aged players  in past events; muscling our way through to glory against younger oppositiont. Besides, it’s not a tournament I rate very much anyway and seeing how the local organisers in Nigeria ran things, it was probably better to avoid watching yet another federal government PR and sports disaster for the country. But then, shouldn’t I have avoided watching the Super Eagles as well? If ever a disaster was apparent it was Nigeria being on course to miss out on yet another World Cup. I ask myself, why did I still harbour the belief that they could still somehow qualify? I guess when you love your team, it’s hard to choose. And just like love, Football is all about joy and pain.

It’s amazing that it has taken about 63 years for the design of the UK electric plug to be so radically improved but that is just what a student of the Royal College of Arts has done. Min-Kyu Choi showcased his design at the college’s graduate show and seems to have been a deserved “show-stopper”. The main attraction to this design I believe is how it manages to compress the plug into a very sleek and compact component without losing any functionality. When folded, the plug measures as just 10mm in width. To unfold it, the two live pins swivel 90 degrees, and the plastic surround folds back around the pins so the face of the plug looks the same as a standard UK plug. Perhaps even more brilliant is Choi’s expansion of the idea into another pleasant looking and very practically multi-plug adaptor. More pictures follow. You can also read more about this from Icon Eye magazine where I first saw it.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg