It’s in French, but there are enough subtitles that even those of you who didn’t take core French classes in elementary school can follow along with the humour.
As Geekosystem noted, they’re often able to recognize that it’s an older form of a technology that the do recognize, but they’re stymied when they try to actually use it.
Except for the one kid who, presented with an old plastic 45 turntable, immediately started scratching.
(from Cyberpresse.ca)
With less than two weeks before Christmas, I guess I can begin to uncouple myself from the deeply ingrained grinchiness and provide you with some Holiday cheer.
North Point Community Church has an iBand — that is, a band that plays music using “i” tools. And it’s pretty cool, too.
Check it out:
When I started learned about journalism and newspapers and all the associated ephemera that comes with it, we were still doing paste-up layout, but the Linotype process was still in enough memories that it was taught — not always in a class, but almost by osmosis.
As Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing comments,
The characteristics of a production process often become desirable when the process becomes obsolete; “flaws” become symbolic of the good taste and expense that old ways acquire when freed from commercial significance. But it’s not just a cult of the hand-made. Even the heaviest and most unwieldy machinery can attain the same same cachet. Whatever the word for this technological nostalgia is, Linotype is surely the most extreme example.
You’ll see this in the recent resurgence of letterpress, as well. A good letterpress operator was once known for being able to just kiss the paper with the ink, leaving a perfect image but no indenting. Nowadays, people beg for and caress the embossing that a heavy letterpress strike will produce. The flaw has become emblematic of the process.
This is also true about leather. A true leather will have flaws because it is made from the skin of an imperfect animal. But “manufactured leather” which is made by bonding together tiny pieces of leftover leather, will have a perfect, flawless grain to it.
Once you know what to look for, you can see this in all kinds of products. Manufacturers know this, too, and that’s why you can buy fake plastic woodgrain that has knots in it.
Weird, it’s like an arms race between authentic and imitation, with the cutting edge being the reproduction of errors.
(“Linotype: The Film” Teaser from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.)
The only reason that escalators can’t curve is because the steps are square. Round ‘em off, and those curves can happen. Yes, please!
I guess the problem is that the handrails would either move at different speeds (depending on whether they were on the inside or the outside of the curves) but that could be solved by using segmented handrails that expand and contract …. or just by using smooth metal that doesn’t move.
Please install a spiral escalator somewhere! (NOT Dubai!)
If you thought that being an artist would protect you from having a computer do your work, think again:
Yes, that’s right — eschewing the view screen, a computer in this point-and-shoot camera calculates what makes a good photograph using some kind of algorithm and rates it for you.
FastCo Design says it’s really not that difficult:
Consider this: Much of what makes a picture artistic could actually be programmed into a camera. Diagonal compositions, color contrasts, foreground/background? All of these are pretty simple things for a computer to vet.
I’ll add to that, the golden photographic rule of thumb, the Rule of Thirds, is really just an approximation of a derivation of the Fibonacci sequence which has been simplified to make it easier for humans to understand. Computers would have the advantage.
Designer Andrew Kupresanin, who came up with the camera prototype, called the Nadia, says that it makes use of the Acquine engine.
Now, for debate: Is this more about computers getting smarter? Or humans getting dumber?
Dyson is known for its weird tornado-powered vacuum cleaners, but they’ve recently come out with bladeless fans — fans that actually produce an eerie vortex of air from an empty ring. It’s like voodoo.
It looks cool, but, like the vacuums, they are expensive. Of course, if you work in the factory, they’re like free.
So, some Dyson employees decided to hook a bunch of these bladeless fans together into a daisy chain. Then, they took a balloon, and filled it with a combination of helium and air so that it neither rose nor sank.
Then, launch:
To my eye, it’s almost like a futuristic version of domino-toppling. I love it.
(via BoingBoing)
It is a common lament around the Absurd Intellectual offices that the hoverboard dreams of our youth have, to date, gone unrealized. Unfairly, I might add. There is all sorts of amazing technological advances occurring in all fields of science, technology and engineering. For example, I recently heard about a car that has been developed that runs on water. Unfortunately, it only runs on water from the Gulf of Mexico… (too soon?)
In any case, why doesn’t some organization throw some effort and research dollars at hoverboards? I mean I really, REALLY want one.
Wait. What do you mean one has been invented? For real?
Absolutely. It actually hovers!
You can’t ride it. And it’s pink.
But, hey. It’s a start…
I don’t know why, but when cats are entertained by something on a computer, or in this case an iPad, it is just so funny.
(via TDW)
Every vehicle on the road today has been subjected to a battery of safety tests, including being smashed into walls with the ubiquitous crash-test dummies loaded inside. But who is keeping our nation’s chopper pilots safe?
The answer: NASA.
In what looks like a boss way to spend a weekend, the folks at NASA have been examining impact crashes of helicopters, like the one above. Yes, I know it doesn’t look like much, but according to the NASA page, the occupants would have “lurched forward violently, suffering potentially spine-crushing injuries.” You can see that in the slo-mo.
No, I don’t know why this responsibility falls to NASA. Nor do I particularly care. I’m just glad that they filmed it and put it on YouTube.
(via BB)
I have blogged about my desire to own a jet pack in the past. That pack, as cool as it may be, had some significant drawbacks. First and foremost, it was powered by water which causes some difficulty if I were interested in flying in, say, the Sahara. And if I’m laying out around $130K for a jet pack, I had better be able to use it anywhere I want.
So, move over Jetlev, make room for the Martin Jet Pack.
The 200 horsepower dual-propeller packs can travel at 60mph for up to 30miles on a full tank of fuel. They have been reached heights of 7,800ft in tests.
At 250lbs when empty, the jet pack is not heavy enough to require a pilot’s licence, although users will take part in a Martin Jetpack training programme.
The price will will be comparable to the Jetlev, but with almost none of the restrictions. You can bet I’m saving my pennies…
Because I work in a photo lab, I see that digital photo frames are all the rage. However, it also seems that the digital frames are being bought for older generations who have no idea how to use it; it’s just the kids and grandkids trying to get their relatives involved in this crazy digital camera thing.
Enter the SD card photo album.
It’s maybe a better way to ease your older relatives into the digital age. They get a photo album without the tricky card slots and hard-to-understand remote, but also a bit of a lesson as to what the thing in their camera is.
And it’s pretty hilarious.
You can purchase one here!
“Augmented reality” is one of those concepts that floats around on the periphery of discussions about the future of technology. If the phrase is new to you, or you’ve been too embarrassed to admit you don’t know what it means, Wikipedia defines augmented reality as:
Augmented reality is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.
Think Minority Report. In the movies it seems cool and exciting and gives some sense of “the future.” Having long been denied my hoverboard as promised to me in Back to the Future II, I’m a bit more pessimistic that augmented reality will be as awesome as the movies make it out to be. In fact, I’m afraid that it’ll only serve to make advertising even more pervasive than it already is.
Masters of Architecture student Keiichi Matsuda, as “part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality,” created the following video to give an idea of what everyday usage of such technology might be like.
It might look like fun in this not-quite-two-minute video, but I think it would get very tiresome very quickly.
Normally, design posts are Grant’s bailiwick, but when I came across this post regarding a concept printer that uses a normal pencil and eraser instead of print cartridges, I had to say something.
That something is this: I hate printer cartridges. Not only am I sure that they are a massive environmental issue (just think of all that plastic entering landfills), I can never find the right cartridge I need when I run out of toner. Sure, I could order extras ahead of time, but that’s not who I am. I want to pick up things I need when I need them. Not early. And certainly not later.
Imagine, then, a printer that you can simply slide a pencil into. Buying a pack of 24 ‘refills’ would be less of an issue. The environmental impact would be minimized.
I like it. Someone make it. I’ll buy it.
You can hook up two cameras and a a computer to let one camera see “through” walls by hithchiking on the other camera’s perspective.
This New Scientist video shows it off, and theorizes that someday — perhaps using heads-up displays in your car windshield of embedded in your contact lenses — people will avoid car accidents by using networks of these cameras to see around blind corners and stuff:
I say, if you allowed cameras to broadcast stuff into your eyes willy-nilly, it would take about 30 seconds before some juvenile hacker started making you watch porn.
This interactive LED display can be found at La Vitrine (The Window), a arts and culture venue in Montreal. Developed by Moment Factory, and created by Photonic Dreams, the wall was created for a special event, but is now being kept as a permanent display, and will be lit from 7-11 every night.
The most interesting part, for me, was how the wall reacted when you went to the door.
While watching this video, I was immediately reminded of the scene in Minority Report where with a scan of his eyes, Tom Cruise’s character had commercials calling his name. And then when he gets his new eyes, it amusingly calls out an Asian name.
Personalized commercials and an interactive LED wall are obviously not quite the same in terms of execution, but they are similar in the sense that they both aim to have technology interact with us.
(via)
