Arachnophobes: stay away from this link. Here's a heart-warming tale for you instead.

Using their Piximilar software technology, which searches images using attributes such as colour, shape, texture, luminosity and complexity, Idée Inc. recently analysed 10 million Flickr pics and came up with something very cool indeed.

Multicolr Search Lab

 

* Edit. And on a related note... design geeks - here's a little something to make your eyes bleed.

 

If you screw up your face at bad grammar and typos, or froth at the mouth when reading nonsensical newspaper copy, you might enjoy this.

...listening to dope podcasts from the Gaslamp Killer, Slug & Droid, Ramadanman and Glasgow's Numbers crew, plus a proper bendy hardware set from Hand of the Plow's Spandex, and, erm, this little beaut. We've also been trying hard to think of a tenuous bullshit excuse to post this vid.

 

Other than all that, we've been sitting on our arses, smoking prison rollies and engrossing ourselves in mindful discussion about the term shrimping (but that's a whole nother blog post).

Spannered would love to meet the man who persuaded Microsoft that this was a good idea for a marketing campaign.

 

 

Better quality version here

 

Courtesy of Kode9.

Certainly no shortage of festivals in the UK this year — or anywhere else by the looks of it. However, if the thought of flat pear cider, James Blunt, mud and paying the best part of ten quid for a foil dish of veggie slop doesn't pop your cork, allow us to suggest a jolly to Bristol's Venn Festival — an ever-expanding, multi-venue annual fixture in the city's calendar, that pulls together a line-up so fresh you can almost see the flyers wriggle.

2008's event inhabits some of the city's coolest venue spaces — Bristol harbourside being the epicentre of activity. Highlights include Mexican laptop legend Murcof spacing out listeners in a planetarium, revered experimentalists Pole and Matmos at the Arnolfini contemporary arts centre, an explosive Saturday night rave in a skateboard park with Moritz von Oswald (Rhythm & Sound), Black Devil Disco Club, Errorsmith and Afrikan Boy, among others, and a closing party on the good ship Thekla with shows from Flying Lotus, The Heliocentrics and Sunburned Hand of the Man. Renegade artist Ergo Phizmiz will also be unveiling a three-day installation at the harbourside Scout Hut, consisting of 'twigs, cutlery, mechanical birds and constant, ever-evolving sound'.

Sound good? Well it will be. For more details about Bristol's most idiosyncratic musical showcase, check the site.