Photographing climbers in Yosemite for National Geographic.

2. Mick Mountz

Mick Mountz revolutionised the packing industry by turning the entire warehouse into robots.

3. Ai WeiWei

Dropping the Urn, Ai WeiWei's ceramics exhibition at the V&A in London.

4. Memory Lane

The Guardian visits Omoide Yokochō – known as Memory Lane, or more commonly, Piss Alley, in Tokyo.

5. A swarm of nano quadrotors

6. David Shrigley’s Brain Activity

David Shrigley’s new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

Simple, striking light + shadow art by Rashad Alakbarov.

2. Nike + Fuleband

3. Noemie Goudal

Lovely installations with a rough, but magical feel by Noemie Goudal.

4. Daniel Arsham

Art that plays with the walls of the gallery.

5. MvsM

6. Yosemite

Stunning.

7. Ballpoint pen paintings

Lovely stuff made through a very specific process: smearing ink onto resin panels, then taking them to a tanning salon for a little UV. by Shane McAdams

8. Andrea Galvani

Moody, solitary photos by Andrea Galvani.

9. Metropolis II

Toy cars as installation art. Nice.

10. 3D face mapping

With thanks to I like this art, illusion 360, Devour, Creative Review, but mostly Chris.

Fresh and striking photography series by Karsten Thormaehlen featuring portraits of centenarians. The series has a lively, bright and optimistic feel that lets you see every wrinkle and crease, but also the spark that reflects life experience.

2. 3D goldfish painting

3. Years

Lovely project that translates wood's year rings into music, played like a record.

4. Quantum Blink

Strange, unsettling and wonderful stuff from Isabel M. Martinez exploring the movement between moments.

5. Tom Moglu

Daily paper collage project by Tom Moglu, showing a lovely sense of texture and simplicity. There’s something nice about the simple shapes within shapes and creating something repetitive, but at the same time giving every collage a sense of uniqueness.

6. Interactive Sesame Street

AT CES, Microsoft demoed the future of interactive TV – an episode of Sesame Street where you could jump in and play along.

7. Mirrorhouse

Nice idea—giving a feeling of invisibility to a buildling.

8. L'Equip Petit

Super-charming and gorgeous looking film about a kids' football team that has never won.

9. Juan Rayos

Simple work with a strong mood by Juan Rayos.

10. Shake

Dogs mid-shake by Carlie Davidson.

With thanks to Chris, I Like This Art, Lost at E Minor, illusion 360 and Creative Applications

HipGeo takes information from your phone based on location and combines it with photos and comments to make a digital map-based collage; a sort of travel diary.

Price: Free

HipGeo on iTunes

Pixel Land (iPhone, iPad)

This is a minimalistic take on Super Mario Bros. It's a fascinating idea; taking something so familiar to so many people and making it totally alien by simplifiying it to 64 pixels.

Price: £0.69

Pixel Land on iTunes

GroupShot (iPhone, iPad)

This app takes a series of shots, lets you choose the parts of each photo for the app to use to build the shot you want. It's an interesting way to consider what makes the perfect shot.

Price: £0.69

GroupShot on iTunes

The Rainbow Machine is a simple, joyful project that uses the idea of light painting to add a rainbow to the background of photos. Nice.

2. Light

Beatiful light ooze.

3. New York

Stunning photo series of NYC by Frederic Bourret offering unexpected angles and different perspectives. 

4. Suitcase symphony

A musical floor for for airports by Jeriel Bobbe. Reminds me of Melody Road.

5. Eyjafjallajokull

Gorgeous projection mapping project by Anti VJ inspired by the Icelandic volcano. Viewers watch as the landscape unfolds on the wall in front of them, and it’s one of the best projection mapping projects out there at interrogating the viewers’ visual perception of space.

6. Babyloid

Fluffy robot designed to ease depression in older people by keeping them company. It’s a great example of the idea that moving away from humanlike features can actually create a more emotional response in people. The Babyloid stays away from the creepiness that would come with simulating a real baby’s face, and in doing so it give people clear cues to which they can respond; LED lights turn red when it’s content and blue when it’s unhappy.

7. Barbara and Michael Leisgen

Nice photos from the 70s by the Leisgens.

8. The Joy of Books

9. Janine Trott

Photography with nice attention to set design by Janine Trott.

10. Gift of Life

With thanks to Josh Spear, illusion 360, New Scientist, I Like This Art, Lost at E Minor

Nice app that combines photography with a bit of 3D projection. What I like about it is its smallness and focus on detail (in counterpoint to apps creating giant panoramas). The thought behind it is capturing those little details just outside the frame. 

Price: £1.49

Stilla on iTunes

Windosill (iPad)

A puzzle game for the iPad filled with funny little objects and sounds. Sufficiently realistic movement and sound combined with a healthy dose of oddness.

Price: £1.99

Windosill on iTunes

Google Translate (iPad)

Newly enlarged for the iPad, and—while there's room for continual improvement in the linguistic accuracy—it's pretty impressive, translating between 63 languages by text and understanding 17 languages when spoken to.

Price: Free

Google Translate on iTunes

This is an online magazine themed around death. For such a heavy topic, though, it’s creatively vibrant, bursting with varied submissions from writers and artists. A rich representation of a complex topic.

2. Ryoichi Kurokawa

3. Richard Shilling

Lovely art made of nature by Richard Shilling.

4. Limbo

Goergeously atmospheric game for Mac about a boy travelling through a dark world.

5. SAGA

Breathtaking natural landscapes photographed by Stockholm-based duo Inka Lindergard and Niclas Holmstrom. 

6. Being Elmo

Fresh from the festival circuit, this is a fascinating documentary about Kevin Clash, Senior Puppet Coordinator of Sesame Street and creator of Elmo. The skill and dedication he possesses to bring such life to a muppet is truly impressive, and the film looks to be quite magical.

7. Jelly Swarm

8. "Tree"

Large scale outdoor installation by Myoung Ho Lee exploring scale and perception.

9. Dreams of Space

Nice blog full of artefacts of past space travel visions.

10. All Eyes on You

Fascinating (if a bit creepy) window display by Britzpetermann made up of huge floating eyes set in a window that follow passersby. With little blinks and ticks, it’s amazing how full of personality a window full of eyes can be.

With thanks to I Like This Art, Creative Applications, Lost at E Minor, Boing Boing and BOOOOOOOOM.

Behind the scenes…

We were inspired by the University of Illinois' experiments with making silver conductive ink:

However, I wasn't allowed to buy a centrifuge, so we thought we'd experiment with what's available off the shelf from your local friendly electronic component supplier. Could we make a Christmas card with a self-contained circuit?

After a lot of research with various silver inks and paints, we found a conductive ink pen that was the easiest to control. The other challenge was making an interactive circuit using as few components as possible that could run off a watch battery.

It wasn't possible to use traditional electronic components as they're too hard to attach to paper. We're using surface-mount electronic components – they're more normally found on the circuit boards in your consumer electronics: they're designed to be placed by robots and soldered on in an oven. Instead we're gluing them to paper by hand and drawing a circuit between them. The main problem is that they're tiny, so we had to find ways to handle them and place them easily.

We ended up with a mini production line.

The finished cards, ready to be sent.

Merry Christmas!

(thanks to Kevin MacLeod for the music)

Drag a line around the screen and watch the silk unfold. Vibrantly mesmerising.

2. Mieders Alpine Coaster

3. Alan George

Nice photos by Alan George that have a specific feeling attached; loneliness in empty space.

4. Made by Hand

5. Hotdog Hustle

Completely mad.

6. Capturing the speed of light

MIT researchers made an imaging system that captures visual data at 1 trillion exposures per second; enough to see photons moving through space.

7. People People Speaker

See-through speaker joy.

8. Seven Days in the Woods

9. Sean Kenney

Don't worry. He's a LEGO professional.

10. Realistic Robot

Welcome to the uncanny valley.

With thanks to Margot, Chris, Lost at E Minor, It's Nice That and BOOOOOOOM.

Nice little app that retrofies your iPhone with the look of a cassette. And you can make and share mixtapes.

Price: £1.49

AirCassette on iTunes

Catball Eats It All (iPhone, iPad)

This is a bonkers game about a cat in ball form. There's something about the aesthetic I really like, and the gaming interface is pretty unique.

Price: Free

Catball Eats it All on iTunes

Dickens Dark London (iPhone, iPad)

Nice app by Museum of London about the history of the area (with a dark slant). It's made up of gorgeous illustrations, words and maps, and it's narrated by the ever-amazing Mark Strong.

Price: Free

Dickens Dark London on iTunes