The accidental history of the @ symbol

  From Smithsonian Magazine: Called the “snail” by Italians and the “monkey tail” by the Dutch, @ is the sine qua non of electronic communication, thanks to e-mail addresses and Twitter handles…The origin of the symbol itself, one of the most graceful characters on the keyboard, is something of a mystery. One theory is that …

In the United Kingdom texting is now more popular than making phone calls

People in the UK are now more likely to text than to make a phone call, according to new research from Ofcom. While 58% of people communicated via texts on a daily basis in 2011, only 47% made a daily mobile call, said the country’s communications industry regulator. It said the shift away from traditional …

An experiment in Monumenta – art at the Grand Palais in Paris, France

Here is an amazing piece of art from the website designboom. Each year the French Ministry of Culture and Communication invites a leading artist to create a work that responds to the exceptional architectural space of the Grand Palais in Paris. The sheer monumental scale of the building provided the inspiration for a big idea: monumenta. …