In the world of creativity, if you're not starting a fire, then what's the point? So, we've created a portal to celebrate the most revolutionary and thought-provoking ideas we're seeing in the world today. Some are ideas we've recognized from others and we're tipping our hats to, and others are ones we thought of (go figure). Either way you cut it, you won't find a dull moment here, and hopefully we've inspired you to start your own fire.
The leopard seal is the second largest seal species in the Antarctic, and is one of the most dangerous predators in the area. It’s not surprising, then, that National Geographic Photographer Paul Nicklen was nervous to enter the water with the largest sea leopard he had ever seen. What happened next is incredible.
What Sparks Our Fire: Photographing the natural world, up close and personal.
What do you think of these close and personal shots?
In response to the inescapable iOS voice command agent Siri, Microsoft has created its own female-voiced assistant. Named Cortana for a character from the popular Halo game series, The Verge has reported how the virtual assistant looks and operates. This software will replace the native Bing search function, with many of the same features that Siri operates, including a personality, internet search, and other normal functions. An important new feature is the ability for Cortana to save data to the Notebook system, which will allow it to access information such as location data, behaviors, personal information, reminders, and contact information, as well as tracking email mentions to create notification reminders.
Microsoft is expected to release the software at the Build conference later this year.
What Sparks Our Fire: Healthy competition leads only to improvement.
What are some features you’d like to see on Cortana?
So, let’s talk about why this photo got millions of tweets and favorites in a matter of hours. It’s a very simple concept of the collusion of several very strong brands into something much more than the sum of it’s parts. In particular, the followings of Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen DeGeneres, and Brad Pitt individually are staggering in the first place. When all of these people come together and do something very normal and human, i.e. take a selfie, not only does that bring all the strength of their collective personas to bear on a single social media post, it also manages to bring the rest of us up to their level. One can imagine being there and being a part of such glamorous proceedings, and to experience that camaraderie even further one shares or favorites the post.
We can expect the post to reach at least 2.5 million retweets and possibly half as many favorites, in addition to media coverage, social media mentions, and astute blog posts about that very subject. It may be that some enterprising advertising executive may decided to get all these people together again to create a new campaign, referencing this photo.
Also this happened, because the internet.
That is far too much Spacey for one picture.
What Sparks Our Fire: The most retweeted tweet ever.
What do you think will be the results of this post?
