Yahoo.com the other week had a couple of articles a couple of weeks ago on trendy uses of Lego in commercial art projects. One featured an exhibit at the Philedelphia Zoo that featured endangered animals rendered in your favorite plastic childrens plastic toy, and another article featured an exhibition of the work of Nathan Sawaya, who creates Lego sculpture for a living.

I’ve always been enamored with Legos, ever since I was a kid, so as an adult having grown up with them, it’s neat to see the Lego block featured in a prominent and more serious light than we usually expect to see them in.

Lego has been, and continues to be, one of those products that sparks innovation and captures the imagination, and it continues to remain popular even as the market and world continues to change around it.

It’s been entertaining to watch all the trials the kids have been facing on The Sony Rocket Project with the weather, and the cracked rocket component that could lead to an explosion, and fears that the parachute won’t deploy correctly. It’s like watching a soap opera at times, or Sony Rocket Project survivor, but the project has been a pretty grand event from a spectators perspective. It’s been fun to see the kids getting to work with the equipment and their thoughts and updates on how things are going. Having said that, I really would like to see this rocket launched properly, since with all the hard work they’ve put into it, it would be nice to see it launched with the greatest chance of success. Still, as with all things, projects don’t always end like we want them too, so we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.

As of today, the project is still on weatherhold. You can follow the project here. Cross your fingers and hope for the best.

I have kind of love hate relationship with the Kin. On the one hand, a phone specifically tailored to social networking sites seems like a sure fire deal, but on the other, it just doesn’t really capture the imagination the way that a lot of similar products such as your basic utilitarian iPhone, the Palm Pre Plus, or even the Blackberry Storm 2 do. Any one of these phone could mimic the functionality of the Kin in seconds with an App upgrade. Still, the features themselves look good, and I can see why people, especially young adults, might like this phone. It’s stylish, and tactile, and has a pretty simple and easily graspable user interface that watching the demo looks easy to pick up. Still, it’s definitely a niche market, and the price has to be right to fit this market, and by right, I mean pretty inexpensive. Less than $100 would be about right in my book for the teenagers and college students that might want this. All in all though, it seems like a very short sighted gimmick on Microsoft’s part. They always seem to gravitate toward the easy fix instead of establishing culture based products that really bring people into their world. It’s a good start, but it requires an order of magnitude more in order to get me to really excited about it.

Still, I don’t get what they are implying by their commercial though. Just watch it, you’ll see what I mean.

These days, with Sony having to constantly reprove themselves to consumers and the media alike, they are more than ever needing to inspire younger groups of people to see Sony as a company that is capable of doing great things, and it can’t be argued, that just as President Kennedy did in the 60′s with the launching of the Apollo Program, Sony is attempting to capture some of that same spirit of exploration with their Rocket Project.

In their promotions, Sony has asked the question, can 10 students using Vaio notebook computers design, simulate, build, and launch a rocket?

While the answer to the question of, can they do it, is obviously yes, the idea that all of the steps can be performed by high school students on a limited budget, with limited time, and little to no prior training is really the part of the project that makes it of interest to the public and captures the imagination.

Also, with the victory of the SpaceShipOne team claiming the X Prize space competition a few years ago, and the more recent announcement by the Obama administration that the United States space program will be increasingly reliant upon commercial endeavors to continue building upon our tradition of space exploration once the shuttle fleet has been mothballed later in the year, these kids and their rocket project could be the next generation of space explorers in another few years, and that’s just inspirational.

Currently, the launch is on weatherhold, but you can follow the launch through completion here.

A Google search engine ad spoof from CollegeHumor.com that is somewhat brilliant, and definitely hilarious. It’s for those of you who have been wondering how one actual does attempt to woo a princess or where one actually should look for hotels on planet Hoth. Trust me, you’ll want to watch this twice.