Known locally as “Point Bob” or “The Point”, Point Roberts is a geopolitical oddity, only being a part of the United States because it lies south of the 49th parallel, which constitutes the Canada-U.S. border in that area.
Smart e-book interface prototype
[KAIST ITC] Smart E-Book Interface Prototype Demo
KAIST Institute of Information Technology Convergence
Patented Smart E-Book Interface Prototype implemented with Apple Private API
Very smart.
The Transparency Grenade
A weapon of greater transparency for greater corporate and governmental transparency.
Created by Julian Oliver for the Studio Weise7 exhibition in Berlin, this conceptual gadget for the information revolution is based on a Soviet F1 Hand Grenade.
Presented in the form of a Soviet F1 Hand Grenade, the Transparency Grenade is an iconic cure for these frustrations, making the process of leaking information from closed meetings as easy as pulling a pin.
Equipped with a tiny computer, microphone and powerful wireless antenna, the Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio at the site and securely and anonymously streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. Email fragments, HTML pages, images and voice extracted from this data are then presented on an online, public map, shown at the location of the detonation.
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This looks amazing. Continue reading
An alternative Windows 8 logo
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It’s hardly inspired, but I think it says ‘Metro’ far more than the real Windows 8 logo. Continue reading
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Playfic is a community for writing, sharing, and playing interactive fiction games (aka “text adventures”).
Behind the scenes, Playfic simply takes the game source you enter and passes it to the commandline Inform 7 compiler, and views it in the browser using the open-source Parchment interpreter that plays the games. Playfic’s just the social glue tying them together.
This seems like a great way to get started with IF!
An idea for the iPhone home button
I’m pleased to report that the idea I posted last week for a bookmarklet to make web citations has attracted a little interest on Forrst.
This weekend idea is much simpler: Turn the iPhone home button into a tiny LCD screen so it can display context-sensitive information. Continue reading
Solar updraft tower
Arizona should be getting some of these sci-fi eco monsters in 2015.
Solar updraft towers combine three technologies to produce power: the greenhouse effect, the chimney effect and wind turbine. Sunshine heats the canopy at the base of the tall chimney causing air to flow upwards towards the turbines at the base which then convert that flow into electricity. The solar tower requires low maintenance, no feed stock (uranium, coal etc.) and emits no pollution.
(via Arizona getting colossal solar updraft tower in 2015 – digitaltrends.com)
WordPress Users Wales meet-up: Wednesday 29th February
The second WordPress Users Wales meet-up is on Wednesday 29th February at The Promised Land, from 6.30pm. As before, register with Eventbrite.
Apparently this is a traditional date for women to make marriage proposals, so there is the potential for the night to take an unexpected turn!
Joel Hughes will be talking about the ‘Developer as Blogger’ and Nicky Getgood ‘WordPress for Hyperlocal’ and her work at Talk About Local. Continue reading
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By Jamie Benning, the maker of Star Wars Begins, Building Empire and Returning to Jedi.
Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” as an interactive animation
Made with openFrameworks and 80,000 particles.
Petros Vrellis has created an interactive visualisation and synthesizer that animates Vincent Van Goghs “Starry Night”, using openframeworks to create a simple and elegant interaction. A fluid simulation gently creates a flowing fabric from Van Goghs impressionist portrait of the Milky Way and night sky over Saint-Rémy in France using the thick paint daubs as the particles within the fluid.
The Puzzlejuice emails: Designing an iOS app
This might be the blog post that goes on to define TL;DR.
So begins an epic multi-part blog post containing the entire email conversation between Asher Vollmer the developer of an iOS puzzle game, and Greg Wohlwend, a designer he brings on board to add some serious good looks. The result is Puzzlejuice (now in the app store).
Transformers 3 VFX breakdowns
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So much technology, talent and time in service of something so mediocre.
WordPress.com infinite scroll – the final straw
WordPress.com have added an infinite scroll ‘feature’ to two of their primary themes, including the Twenty Eleven theme I use here.
In the quest to make visitors engage with your content as effortlessly as possible we are rolling out a new feature to your blog home pages—infinite scrolling! Instead of having to scroll and click through older-pages links we are now pulling new content automatically whenever a visitor approaches the bottom of a blog.
Best thing, it should be entirely transparent to you or your readers. The feature is enabled for blogs with the Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven themes.
We take care of the smaller details, such as removing the older/next links, integrating with your design as smoothly as possible. Having said that, please let us know what you think by posting any feedback you may have. Thanks.
Another way of looking at this is that they have deleted my footer from the main page of my site, and given me no way to return it (short of picking another theme and undoing all the work I’ve put into this one).
I don’t have the will to add my voice to the many, many complaints already being voiced in the forums. Instead I think I’ll be creating my own self hosted WordPress blog. Continue reading
Alan Moore on Anonymous and that iconic mask
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By the early sixteen-hundreds, the bonfires traditionally lit around the start of November had been co-opted as trappings for a sort of national anti-Catholic day at which effigies of the Pope would be incinerated.
As mastermind behind the terrorist outrage du jour, however, the plot’s nominal leader Guido Fawkes rapidly replaced the pontiff as hate-mascot of choice on these occasions.
Jump forward 300 years, though, to the battered post-war England of the 1950s, and the saturnine insurrectionary had taken on more ambiguous connotations.
When parents explained to their offspring about Guy Fawkes and his attempt to blow up Parliament, there always seemed to be an undertone of admiration in their voices, or at least there did in Northampton.
While that era’s children perhaps didn’t see Fawkes as a hero, they certainly didn’t see him as the villainous scapegoat he’d originally been intended as.
Viewpoint: V for Vendetta and the rise of Anonymous – bbc.co.uk/news
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Declan Lawn hunts down racist troll Darren Burton aka Nimrod Severn.
The Mass Intelligent
This epic presentation by Andrew Rashbass of The Economist hypothesises that smart is the new cool, and what that means for publishing.
Debatewise: A good system for constructive debate
Debatewise.org is a site I think about every time I see an argument on Twitter or in a comment thread on some blog or other. The reality of the site falls very far short of the promise on offer:
[…] a place where the best possible arguments for one side are listed next to the best possible arguments against. These arguments aren’t created by one person, but by like-minded individuals collaborating to form the strongest case. This allows people both to easily compare the pros and cons and also to come to a decision safe in the knowledge they have the best information to hand.
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This post by Robert Scoble describes the main reason why I despise Facebook. It’s not their lack of respect for user’s privacy, it’s not their amoral founder or their virtual monopoly in social media. It’s that they have provided something that satisfies the needs of most regular users so well that they’ve critically — and perhaps fatally — injured the common web.
It’s too late to save the common web. It’s why, for the past year, I’ve given up and have put most of my blogging into Google+. I should have been spending that effort on the web commons and on RSS but it’s too late.
Normal users don’t care about the argument anymore and they are addicted to Facebook and Google+ and Twitter and apps on iPhones and Android. Heck, if you are at the Super Bowl tomorrow the official app is on iOS and Android and not other platforms.
The common web isn’t just under attack, it’s been under attack for more than four years.
Why did it take so long for people to wake up?
It’s too late for Dave Winer and John Battelle to save the common web – scobleizer.com
halfblog.net 