tech
"The biggest leaps are almost always early in the development of a technology. For example, consider the change from superstition and folk remedies to the germ theory of disease. Even with all the medical advances since, what can compare to that leap?"
Developer John Siracusa
Don't believe everything you read.
I am a gamer. I don’t work for Microsoft.
I, like most other gamers, am sick of seeing endless rumours and speculation citing “anonymous sources” or “insiders” with no evidence, no proof, no guarantee that they’ve been fact-checked or can be relied on.
The games industry is the only one I can…
The sad state of Journalism exposed.
Base 8: Generative art that grows and finds a home in the spaces between your fingers and hands.
Author Chris Sugrue about the work:
The title of the work was inspired by several rare languages that developed an octal counting base because their culture counted using the spaces in between fingers rather than the fingers themselves (as in the much more common decimal system).
The work uses a 19th century theater trick (Pepper’s ghost) that was originally employed to create the illusion of phantoms or spirits on the stage with live actors. In this modern adaptation of the technique, the illusion is used to create the sensation of a reactive floating world coming to life directly around the visitors body.
Incredible technology to put 3D objects and animate then inside real-life photographs
"Objects are never humans to a computer, nor are they faces or bodies. It aims not for man as an object. The reason is simple: because the computer is this object in and of itself. Maybe this is why we do not cry at websites like we cry at the movies. Maybe it is why there is no “faciality” with the computer, why there is no concept of a celebrity star system (except ourselves), no characters or story (except our own), no notion of recognition and reversal, as Aristotle said of poetry. If the movie screen always directs toward, the computer screen always directs away. If at the movies you tilt your head back, with a computer you tilt in."
The Interface Effect by Alexander R. Galloway
"Digital technology is programmed. This makes it biased toward those with the capacity to write the code. In a digital age, we must learn how to make the software, or risk becoming the software. It is not too difficult or too late to learn the code behind the things we use—or at least to understand that there is code behind their interfaces. Otherwise, we are at the mercy of those who do the programming, the people paying them, or even the technology itself."
Rushkoff, Douglas. Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. New York: OR Books, 2010. (via carvalhais)
(via codelog)
Chemical etching can spontaneously transform a flat silicon surface into one consisting of nanoscale facets, a process that covers the surface with tiny pyramids. Via.
"Power is no longer measured in land, labour, or capital, but by access to information and the means to disseminate it… Unless we design and implement alternate information structures which transcend and reconfigure the existing ones, other alternate systems and life styles will be no more than products of the existing process. Our species will survive neither by totally rejecting nor unconditionally embracing technology - but by humanizing it; by allowing people access to the informational tools they need to shape and reassert control over their own lives."
(via dhiyamuhammad)
How will car design change once we get driverless cars?
While electric vehicles all have good acceleration, an ideal robocar trip is perfectly timed with traffic lights and other traffic so it does not stop and start regularly. We like this because it’s more efficient, but it also means that acceleration is rare, and need not be that zippy. Indeed, for comfort, you may prefer it slow.
This may allow transmissions to be designed differently, to be cheaper and more efficient — or even non-existent.
Sport driving vehicles will continue to have good acceleration, of course. Whistlecars would probably want this acceleration too.
Today, the price of a car is often strongly linked to its acceleration. This may change.
Not all of the ideas listed are practical, some may not even make sense; but the general direction of Brad’s thinking is on-target.
Corinne Pant decides to riff on Panasonic’s Note headphone design by Sholz & Friends
Clever iPad Docking Station by Scott Eaton at Venus of Cupertino
Unless you’re a former Yahoo like me, nothing about this screenshot will jump out at you — but the little ® next to the logo, a long-standing symbol of pointless, unthinking corporateness, is gone from the Yahoo home page. It’s such a little thing, but getting the little things right is important. Maybe Marisa Mayer really can turn things around over there. (They’re even pulling them off the walls)
Subtle, but nice move.
Nice catch. Sends the right signals. Can’t wait to see her turn this around.
Flick Scrolling
You might wanna watch the video above, but in short: When scrolling content on a touch-screen, instead of letting momentum stop the scrolling, you can decide exactly where it should stop. It stops at the point where you flicked it.
It would be great for things like books, blogs, timelines or anywhere where you don’t fly over, but continuously wanna “move forward”. Kinda like paging but within and long scroll. Some apps have a page up/down feature, but I don’t really use it because it moves always the whole height and might cut off a picture or so. With this “flick scrolling” you can decide to where it should move to. The last paragraph or beginning of a picture.
Why not just use pages or cards? Yes, that works sometimes, but not always, especially not when you have no control over the content. iA wrote a good post about it: Scroll or Card? With flick-scrolling you get the joy of “card flipping” without the cards.
Here the two demos from the video so you can try it out (only tested on iOS).
Warning: I’m not really a programmer so the demo is just a hack to demonstrate how it could work. Would need some improvements. And of course, performance would be better if it would be implemented natively.
One thing I’m not sure about.. there is the possibility that you intend to do a flick scroll but end up doing a normal scroll or vice versa. You can judge for yourself in the demos. Maybe the detection could be further optimized or here some other possibilities (Let me know if you can think of more).
- Use a two-finger scroll. But then you can’t use just your thumb which makes it not that useful.
- Split up the screen into two areas, for example left for normal scroll and right for flick-scroll.
Credits: Demos use the iScroll4 library and in the timeline demo, the “scrollToElement” feature is used, which is a pretty cool one.
Terrific job. Want.
"Entrepreneurs get stuck trying to find something they are passionate about. Picking a business you are passionate about is not as important as being passionate about the process of building a business. I’m not passionate about any particular business industry, but I am passionate about finding problems and solving them. Make your passion solving problems and adding value – then you can go almost anywhere and do anything. And most importantly, you can get started. Once you get started, you start to see dozens of new opportunities open up that never existed when you stood still."
Dane Maxwell, creator of The Foundation in 10 Sobering Lessons Learned After Teaching 88 Struggling Entrepreneurs For 6 Months.
