Lego Calendar syncs with Google Calendar

Now this is really cool stuff. Though i have to ask, what exactly are the benefits* of making it physical rather than digital (like a shared board).

*apart from the coolness factor

There no benefits of a shared board like this as it's the worst of both worlds; a ridged, inflexible layout that you'd get with a digital calendar but without the user friendly labels / legends to explain what you're seeing.

What this is, is a publicity stunt to show off the individuality and inventiveness that this particular company wants to be known for. And for that reason alone, this deserves to exist.

There's so many businesses competing for our attention with the same products but remixed and with the same corporate speak, that it's nice to see something that engages my inner child. Whether this is practical or not almost seems irrelevant because it's fun, motivates me to invent my own projects and, most importantly for them, it stands a greater chance of going viral - which equates to free advertising.

Too often we forget that the coolness factor has benefits in itself. People want to use it. That really makes a difference.

Visibility throughout the studio and its tactile nature are important too.

You use other senses than vision. When planning you engage with your tactile senses and spatial sense. Probably there is also some "rite" factor which increases your commitment. You have to get up from your chair, come to lego board and change the bricks :)

There is an inspiring book by Pragmatic Programmers - Pragmatic thinking and learning. It recommends engaging with other senses to improve your cognitive / creative abilities. For example they recommend using LEGO bricks to "materialize" your SW architecture or processes.

I agree the coolness factor is great :) I love the idea synchronization. Great job! (even if it was made just to attract an audience).

Most of the people link their time representation to space. People do not apprehend the digital representation of space the same way as the real space. This means that for some people, it is faster and easier to feel the time represented by a physical object than the same digital object.

One thing they talk about in the video is that you can literally stack up and trade blocks with people.

Each block represents half a day devoted to a particular project (color coded). Having 16 blocks of Lego to put up on your board is way more fun than just saying in a general way that 8 hours need to go toward a project this week.

It takes scheduling/planning and makes it fun and possibly more efficient.

I'd say it's the large form factor. Having something four metres wide that you can see from across the room can be quite handy.

You can still use it when your power and or internet connection is down ;-)

Great idea! One question though, what about other way around - Google calendar to Lego calendar? or It will just merge with existing events in Google calender?

Yeah, this is what I was expecting based on the phrasing of the title.

Yeah, it "syncs to" rather than "with"

Sounds like a job for a Mindstorms robot!

OT: That canvas home badge/icon/image is incredible, it's slowly enough animated that it's not distracting and you don't really notice until you go to use the button at which point you notice the beauty.

Are you referring to the hugely distracting nonfunctional never-ending animation that calls constant attention to the least important part of the page?

If you're looking for a purely functional website, this is probably the worst site for you to be on.

Just look at the ASCII art that just says Creative Applications . Net right after the doc type declaration.

Are you kidding me? This is the web 1.0 spinning globe gif all over again.

would be handy to just have a webcam pointed at a wipeboard ... then save any snap different from the previous one (sans people standing in the way). and detect certain shapes to auto-link with a URL. also, i would like a pony!

That was my first thought, it seems like the 'take photo/email to special address' step is a bit long winded.

They should just slap a raspberry pi / webcam on the opposite wall and get it to take a photo every 10 minutes.

Cool. It would be even cooler, and more useful, if someone builds a Lego robot that reads a Google calendar and then updates the Lego version on the wall...

So the guy sitting next to the stacked blue, white and pink pieces is the accountant? Lego-powered steampunk!