Category: Blog

Glam Media Is Huge! Bigger than Wikipedia or Apple. The only Internet properties with more US users are Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo.

Via Mary Meacher’s Internet Trends. Glam Media was partially founded by Susan Kare, creator of all the Apple Macintosh’s most iconic(?) icons.

Dropcam lets you just start streaming video. Broadcast is changing.

Using Constraint Programming to solve an xkcd comic.

You can make a Stormtrooper of yourself.

The New Yorker has made Strongbox – a way of securely submitting information to their journalists.

Being diagnosed as being Dyspraxic and Dyslexic while I was at the Royal College of Art was one of the most significant moments of my life. An interesting article on Neurodiversity.

Can the New York Times save itself by making new ways of telling stories?

I’d love to meditate using binocular video streaming. Imagine orienteering with such a system? Or a game of it? A team game?

Airware is raising cash:

And building the software and hardware to enable to people to come up with new applications.

Pete Mackenzie sends two videos, A drone that uses sonar to sense:

and another:

Sarah Bates sends a lovely film of downhill skating:

And Irish Folk Furniture:

 Controversy around D-Wave continues.

Viking Squad sounds like the raddest Police Unit ever. Imagine a Viking Squad buddy cop movie? Iceland certainly seems to have a very low rate of violent crime.

If This Then That keeps on gathering more and more awesome.

Tom Scott detailing all the LIES on the London Underground.

Via Honor Harger, a guide to the ruins of super science.

“Beware of Mr. Baker“. Not a pleasant guy, but certainly a committed drummer. As he says many times in the film:

“I had perfect time.”

UK R&D science is falling behind, but Google paying their tax could help pay for it. How can Google defend themselves against this? It’s just morally wrong. Simple. Google are vulnerable to this. Everyone always retreats behind the shareholder duty wall on this one, but I don’t think it will wash.

It’s not news, but in America, not all mass shootings are equal.

All the LulzSec team are getting locked up – but not the real criminals. What a waste all round.

“You need the people who want to work at a high level but who can go all the way down to the atoms.”—Ben Fried, March, 2012

Thanks to Mike Kruzeniski for the link.

I’ve seen Rahul Mehrota speak several times. I most recently saw him at What Design Can Do in Amsterdam – where he described his architecture as a tool to resist the pressure of capital. He used several examples but the one that stuck in my mind was the idea of greening the exteriors of corporate buildings – instead of using nets to stop rioters, use a blanket of plants – but also a system that enables eye contact between gardeners and the board. A useful check for both sides of the coin. Also see his Elephant/Human Housing project.

I graduated from the Interaction Design MA course (mmm bit-rot) at the Royal College of Art in 2003. After I left, the course was renamed to Design Interactions and taken over by Anthony Dunne of Dunne and Raby.

I didn’t like it. Just when hardware platforms and computer vision and interaction methods were getting really cheap, the course turned towards bio-futures and other visions of the near now, that I thought were just intellectual masterbation. Why don’t we just make the future?

I saw Mr. Dunne speak at What Design Can Do. It was great! I felt the need to apologise to him afterwards. He emphasised schools as places away from commercial pressure, and the idea of making tools for experimenting with ideas – and also how you signal with design that that tools aren’t the final idea.

He presented his Micro Kingdoms project, which set off some interesting ideas in my mind.

Technical Illusions have made an interesting new project called Cast AR – using projected light to augment the world around you – not lock you away. 

Arduino Yún  is the first of a revolutionary family of wifi products combining Arduino with Linux. Yún means “cloud” in chinese language,  as the purpose of this board to make it simple to connect to complex web services directly from Arduino.

I want a Dura-Ace shifting system on my new bike.

Oh, and Cosmic Carbone wheels.

Brilliant – just use Kickstarter for your startup!

What about launching an ultimate stealth style or magazine or channel online by ignoring DNS and just having an IP address? Lovely graffiti too.

Jeremy Kun on Bezier Curves and Picasso.

I used to play Go at university, now it’s a lovely language that Google really likes. It’s fast too.

View the editing of Wikipedia in real time.

Blackberry have open sourced a game engine called GamePlay.

“This is Water” by David Foster Wallace. The value of the totally obvious. The exact same experiences can be completely different to different people. What is true? Or false or bad? What is hardwired? How we construct meaning is an intentional choice. Blind certainty – or the prisoner that doesn’t even realise they are in their cell. Or realising that most things you are sure of are mostly false. The natural self-centred-ness of our existence. How much of a lie that is.  Striving to rid yourself of your self-centredness. The point of a liberal arts education – teaching you how to think? The dangers of over-intellectualisation in ones own head, instead of paying attention to what is going on around you. How to avoid living death. The personal unfairness of selfish stupidity around you – and the necessary effort to understand the stories around you. How to think. How to pay attention. How to experience the burning amazingness of the universe in everything, and deciding to see it – and that being what an education affords you. Everybody worships – the only choice is what to worship. Most things will eat you alive.

Angela Bullochmakes drawing machines and big pixels.

School for Poetic Computation is an artist run school launching this fall in New York. A small group of students and faculty will work closely to explore the intersections of code, design, hardware and theory — focusing especially on artistic intervention. It’s a 10 week program, a hybrid of residency and research group, that will happen multiple times per year to be a powerboost for creativity. Our motto is: more poetry, less demo.

School for Poetic Computation has a FAQ.