October 2011
20 posts
British man’s prosthetic arm doubles as Nokia C7 dock
Smartphones have changed our lives, sure, but for those with only one arm, the touchscreen-centric devices can be a downright nuisance. Trevor Prideaux of Somerset, England has worked out of a solution, with help from Nokia and some folks in the medical community. A prosthetist built the 50-year-old catering manager a limb with a...
DIY e-bike hack gets washing machine motorization, stuck on permanent spin cycle (video)
Do all dead washing machines go to meet that lonely Maytag repairman in the sky? Nope, some of’em get their guts repurposed for use in hipster transportation, otherwise known as bicycles. At least that’s what one fed up, frugal Munich denizen did to avoid that German’s city costly PT...
Solar Ship takes to the skies powered by good deeds and sunshine (video)
The Solar Ship is a little bit airplane, a little bit blimp and all good intentions. The hybrid dirigible combines the cockpit and landing gear of a plane with the top of a blimp, the latter of which is lined with solar panels. The green vehicle can take off from and land on short runways, an ideal feature in a craft...
Post-it watches
PA Design sells die-cut post-its shaped like wristwatches, gummed so they can be joined at the wrist. A cute way to put notes where you’re sure to glance at them.
Montre Post It Pense bête [pa-design.com]Presented By:
Visualize the Future of the Anywhere Office
Has your company seen an increase in workplace mobility? Does the cloud really matter for your...
Willie Nelson reads poem for Occupy Wall Street protesters Video Link: Willie Nelson and his wife wrote this poem in solidarity with the “Occupy” movement. “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for,” they read. Disclosure: I love this totally awesome dude, and he can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned.
(via Greg Mitchell’s excellent OWS liveblog at...
ThinFilm and PARC demo printable, organic CMOS circuit, inch us closer to an ‘internet of things’
ThinFilm and the legendary PARC (of mouse and GUI fame) announced they have produced a working prototype of a printable circuit that incorporated organic, rewritable memory and transistors. The resulting integrated circuits are essentially CMOS “chips” that can be printed...
OmniTouch projection interface makes the world your touchscreen (video)
Sometimes you just want to make notes on your forearm. Put that permanent marker down though, because PhD student Chris Harrison et al at Microsoft Research have created a new system that allows touchscreen interaction on hairy and uneven surfaces. It uses a short-range depth camera instead of the infrared sensor...
Microsoft’s PocketTouch prototype is like x-ray vision for your fingers (video)
Is it more gauche to pull out your phone in the middle of a date, or to draw a bunch of crop circles on your pants? That’s the question we were asking ourselves after coming across PocketTouch — a new Microsoft Research prototype that lets you manipulate your handset without ever removing it...
Kinect Turns Any Surface Into a Touch Screen Researchers combine a Kinect sensor with a pico projector to expand the possibilities for interactive screens.
A new prototype can transform a notebook into a notebook computer, a wall into an interactive display, and the palm of your hand into a smart phone display. In fact, researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University say their new...
SideBySide makes tiny projectors fun again (video)
Kids these days just don’t get thrilled by tiny projectors the way they used to. Disney Research is hoping to address the problem with its new SideBySide prototype, a pico projector that interacts with images projected nearby. The device outputs both visible and infrared light, while a built-in sensor detects the latter, allowing it to...
Mycestro is one wearable 3D ring mouse to rule them all (video)
Sure, we’ve seen some wearable mice in the past (some more wearable than others), but this little one from Innovative Developments offers up some fairly diverse applications. The Mycestro’s four buttons can be used for basic work functionality — the wearer can also use gestures to perform these tasks, making an...
GE’s new factory will push out one solar panel every ten seconds
General Electric is sending its troops to Colorado to conquer the thin film solar panel business. The 38th state will play home to a new facility that leverages the supermodel-thin panel know-how of PrimeStar Solar, which GE scooped up back in 2008. In traditional solar panels, sand is refined into silicon ingots, sliced...
Maide Control iPad app lets you build and view 3D models with your bare, sweaty hands (video)
Looking for a hands-on 3D controller that won’t require any five-fingered peripherals? Check out Maide Control — a new app that allows users to manipulate 3D CAD data from the comfort of their iPad displays. Available for $4.99 on iTunes, this app will wirelessly sync an iPad with any...
Ball-camera that you toss in the air for a 360° panorama
Jonas Pfiel’s “Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera” sports 36 cameras and contains firmware that stitches their output together to form a global panorama; you throw it into the air and at the top of its arc, it takes a snap and processes it.
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
from Boing Boing http://bit.ly/oO8qPd
Cheese or font? You’re given a name and you have to guess if it’s a cheese or a font. This might be the most difficult game I’ve ever played. (thx, @ziggy444) Tags: cheese food typography
from kottke.org http://bit.ly/nbKw7P
Take control of your phone’s sensors
For several years, the Human Dynamics research group at the MIT Media Lab has been using the standard sensors in smartphones to collect data about peoples social interactions, drawing surprising conclusions about the way political opinions, dietary habits and illnesses — among other things — spread through populations.
from PhysOrg.com -...
Boogie Board Rip goes on pre-order, no more tearing through notepads
The Boogie Board Rip is now available to pre-order for all your digital sketching needs. The latest stylus-friendly writing tablet from Improv Electronics adds the ability to save notes and sketches, then port them across to your computer as PDFs. Its reflex LCD only uses power when it’s wiping the screen, meaning it...
Adobe reveals Creative Cloud, links Touch Apps to Creative Suite with 20GB storage
Dropbox just not doing the trick for your design work load? Perhaps Adobe can help. The company has announced Creative Cloud, a “hub for viewing, sharing and syncing of files created by Adobe Touch Apps and Adobe Creative Suite.” Included with the service is 20GB of cloud storage, which will probably...
The Innovator’s Cookbook The Innovator’s Cookbook is a collection of texts on innovation collected by Steven Johnson. The video is a pretty good introduction (and illustration) of what to expect from the book.
From bestselling author and Internet pioneer Steven Johnson, The Innovator’s Cookbook (on sale October 4, 2011) is an essential book for anyone interested in...
Multi-touch finger paintings Ha! Evan Roth is selling a series of “multi-touch finger paintings” called Open Twitter, Check Twitter, Close Twitter. The paintings are made by placing tracing paper over an iPhone screen while he checks Twitter with a painted finger.
Tags: art Evan Roth iPhone Twitter
from kottke.org http://bit.ly/rkIyhK
September 2011
16 posts
Kinect Project Merges Real and Virtual Worlds New software turns the Kinect into a cheap 3-D scanner—opening up applications ranging from crime fighting to interior design.
Microsoft’s Kinect Xbox controller, which lets gamers control on-screen action with their body movements, has been adapted in hundreds of interesting, useful, and occasionally bizarre ways since its release in November...
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces A couple years ago, I pointed to a 10-minute clip of a longer documentary called The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Some kind soul has put the whole thing up on YouTube:
This witty and original film is about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others don’t. Beginning at New York’s Seagram Plaza, one of the...
Fucking lush mate
Wooden Shjips video for “Lazy Bones”
Dig the video for Wooden Shjips’ “Lazy Bones,” available on their new album West, out now from Thrill Jockey. The band’s sound is an epic trip induced by 1960s psych, avant-garde minimalism, and the f/x-drenched guitar of Spacemen 3, whose Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember mastered this album. The West vinyl sold out...
Wooden Shjips video for “Lazy Bones”
Dig the video for Wooden Shjips’ “Lazy Bones,” available on their new album West, out now from Thrill Jockey. The band’s sound is an epic trip induced by 1960s psych, avant-garde minimalism, and the f/x-drenched guitar of Spacemen 3, whose Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember mastered this album. The West vinyl sold out...
Rick Perry: “Save a pretzel for the gas jets”
[Video Link] He must’ve been coached. (Via Dangerous Minds)
from Boing Boing http://bit.ly/nvA5uT
VLC coming to Android
The open Android ecosystem keeps on getting more interesting. Austen Dicken, a key developer on the CyanogenMod project, is making great strides in porting VLC Player, the best, most versatile media player in the universe, to run on Android handsets and tablets.
from Boing Boing http://bit.ly/nzpcrO
Browsing over the shoulder Artist Jonus Lund is broadcasting what he’s browsing in realtime. Each time he goes to a new site in his web browser, his site updates. When I visited earlier, he was looking at Lifehacker. Tags: art Jonus Lund
from kottke.org http://bit.ly/pfhFSz
Google puts the Dead Sea Scrolls in the cloud, promises they won’t dissolve when you touch them
You think your finger grease does bad things to your smartphone’s touchscreen? Just imagine the horrors it would wreak on some ancient documents. As promised, Google has saved history the heartbreak of succumbing to your grubby paws by digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like pretty much...
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Shapeways serves up prêt-à-imprimer 3D bones, Lagerfeld stands by for full skeletal replacement
3D printed chocolates? Sure, sounds innocuous enough. But made-to-order 3D printed bones? Now, that’s just morbid. For the surgical team at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, however, the tech’s come in handy as a budget-priced, pre-operative planning tool. Mark Frame, an...
West Virginia’s ‘Quiet Zone’ becomes refuge for those on the run from wireless technology
There’s a 13,000-square-mile section of West Virginia known as the Quiet Zone where there’s no WiFi, no cell service, and strict regulations placed on any device that could pollute the airwaves. Those unique conditions are enforced (and aided by the surrounding mountains) to...
Sphero the smartphone controlled ball gets ready to roll out, we go hands-on (video)
The plucky little white ball that first rolled its way into our hearts back at CES is back, and now it’s getting ready to continue its journey onto store shelves. Sphero is a little plasticLED-lit orb that can be controlled using a number of smartphone applications. The toy’s makers like to refer...
Emigre type specimen catalogs Emigre has made their type specimen catalogs available in PDF format.
Tags: design Emigre typography
from kottke.org http://bit.ly/q3s88O
This Automatic Window Closer Senses Loud Locomotives
Ed Rogers lives next to active train tracks, which leads to a lot of noise in his bedroom when a train passes and the windows are open. Like any good maker, Ed solved his problem with a homebrew automatic window closer. He attached a pair of linear actuators to the windows with 3D printed brackets. These actuators are controlled by an Arduino...
amazing
Bringing the London Bus Network home The afternoon Transport For London quietly launched countdown.tfl.gov.uk, a desk-beer was in my hand after our Friday Demos. Countdown tells you when busses are arriving at any of London’s 18,541 bus stops. I was due for a meeting in a pub in 20 minutes, but I thought I’d have a poke around. It quickly became clear that whilst there was not yet an official API...
Bringing the London Bus Network home The afternoon Transport For London quietly launched countdown.tfl.gov.uk, a desk-beer was in my hand after our Friday Demos. Countdown tells you when busses are arriving at any of London’s 18,541 bus stops. I was due for a meeting in a pub in 20 minutes, but I thought I’d have a poke around. It quickly became clear that whilst there was not yet an official API...
February 2011
8 posts
Frédéric Chaubin - Google Search →
John Collier - Google Search →
RE-THINKING CREATIVE ECONOMY AS RADICAL SOCIAL... →
Freedom Of Creation | Pioneers in 3D Printed... →
Treasure Annual Report 2008 - The Treasure Act →
sounds on buttons (rollout and rollover) - Flash... →
on(rollOver){ sound.play(“smoke_alarm”); } on(rollOut){ sound.stop(“smoke_alarm”); }
John William Godward - Google Search →
Vivian Maier - Her Discovered Work →
January 2011
4 posts
YouSendIt: Online File Sharing and collaboration... →
QED - Quality Enabling Devices Ltd →
The Good Gym →
Aaron Finnis - Artworks →
December 2010
6 posts
bOING bOING Digital →
Roger Kaputnik
2010 July « Movieartreview's Blog →