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Originally from Split Screen on May 17, 2007, 2:36pm

Continuing research into applications of multi-touch, Microsoft have just announced their multi-touch and tangible interface named Surface. A 30 inch display built into this table demonstrates many of the models of interaction we have seen previously, but is the first to be mass produced for market. Using camera tracking and a wide angle projector, the interface can recognise fingertips and visual markers (for object identification).

The slick marketing videos on the website show finger movement dragging and rotating photos & video, emailing them, finger painting and using a paintbrush. Initial rollout will be for commercial partners, so there demonstrations of ordering food in a restaurant, finding directions on a map etc. They also show applications of sharing images and music by placing devices onto the table and dragging content between them, although these videos are just concepts.

The origins page describes the projects beginnings in 2001. More on this later.
Popular Mechanics has a behind the scenes video.

“The company is selling the Surface for between $5,000 and $10,000 each, but aims to bring prices down to consumer levels in three to five years and introduce various shapes and forms” - Reuters

You can try Surface at the Sheraton Hotel New York from June 9th and at Siggraph.

Originally by Chris OShea from Pixelsumo on May 30, 2007, 3:41am

Originally from Split Screen on May 16, 2007, 2:29pm

Originally from Split Screen on May 15, 2007, 2:02pm

an animated & fully browsable map of all homes in the United States, based on the huge catalog of U.S. residential properties & their construction dates retrieved from Trulia. developed by the well-known stamen.com, the dynamic animations use the year the properties were built to show the growth of streets, neighborhoods & cities over time.

it is quite impressive to explore how some sudden residential growths develop over time, ranging from the lineair, grid-like Plano, Texas, the internal redevelopments caused by SoMa San Francisco or the fast growing metropolitan areas around Las Vegas.

[links: trulia.com & stamen.com]

Originally from information aesthetics on May 29, 2007, 7:12pm

Originally from BLDGBLOG on June 11, 2007, 9:12am

the proliferation of lifestyle centric developments have another hobby to cater to: astronomers…

oh, those telescopes can cost more then the house!

Chiefland Astronomy Village in Florida, Arizona Sky Village in southeast Arizona, and Deerlick Astronomy Village, 120 miles east of Atlanta are the start of this trend. I’ve heard of fly-in subdivisions for pilots, then there are the ubiquitous golf developments, boaters have waterfront homes everywhere they can. all get their…

Originally from Archinect.com Feed, ReBlogged by Doug on Jun 8, 2007 at 01:58 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on June 8, 2007, 1:58pm

a collection of photographs illustrating the kinds & amounts of food consumed by 15 different families around the world.

[link: time.com & amazon.com (Hungry Planet: What the World Eats)|via kottke.org]

see also what does 200 calories look like?

Originally from information aesthetics on June 6, 2007, 10:18pm

a dynamic network visualization based on the aesthetics of arcade-style video games. users play the role of a copyright enforcing mercenary whose mission is to collect evidence on the bit torrent users they are downloading from/uploading to. the markers sticking out of Earth represent geolocated peers connected to the user, with color representing the connection state. the Mothership conveys the files on the hard drive that are being shared, as the arms visually display the pieces that are downloaded so far. the little space trucks show the rate of data moving in & out of the computer.

as a distributed, dynamic visualization exploring privacy, piracy & surveillance, Torrent Raiders challenges Internet users, content pirates & government spooks to examine their allegiances and mistrust their computer connections.

a promo-video after the break.

[link: torrentraiders.com & youtube.com|thnkx Aaron]

Originally from information aesthetics on May 30, 2007, 11:15pm

is a recycling of the famous game PONG [Atari 1975-1977]. This new version has been built with Flash [Action Script] by Arjan Westerdiep for Recyclism™ (Benjamin Gaulon).

This project is exploring the concept of Augmented Reality by using and interacting with urban architectures [buildings] as background for the game. Thus the game is projected on a building and the limits of that building are becoming the limits of the game area. The ball projected on the building bounces along the limits of the walls. The software is also using the windows as an obstacles for the game. So the ball is limited to frame of the building. As you touch the ball with the slider, its speed increases and because the ball bounces on all the obstacles of the architecture it becomes more and more difficult to play.

okay, this is pretty cool…JB

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by FLUXXlab on Jun 6, 2007 at 12:33 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on June 6, 2007, 12:33pm

Here’s a beer bottle solar-powered water heater from China -

A Chinese farmer has made his own solar-powered water heater out of beer bottles and hosepipes. Chinese farmer Ma Yanjun has made his own solar-powered water heater out of beer bottles and hosepipes /Lu Feng. “I invented this for my mother. I wanted her to shower comfortably,” says Ma Yanjun, of Qiqiao village, Shaanxi province. Ma’s invention features 66 beer bottles attached to a board. The bottles are connected to each other so that water flows through them.

Ananova - Beer and sunshine land farmer in hot water - [via] Link.

sounds like a good idea…JB

Originally from MAKE Magazine, ReBlogged by FLUXXlab on Jun 6, 2007 at 12:51 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on June 6, 2007, 12:51pm

Filed under: Household

More LED goodness for ya, this time in the form of a desk lamp, not a backlit LCD. The Z-Bar won I.D. Magazine’s “best of category” award which is pretty sweet considering the category wasn’t just lamps, it was furniture. The Z-Bar’s 66, long-livin’ LEDs pump 100 lumens in pretty much any direction you want thanks to that 47-inch, finger-thin neck loaded with hinges and rotational joints. Sure, 100 lumens doesn’t seem like much when compared to an incandescent’s 500-800 lumens. The Z-Bar’s trick is to focus the light in a 50-degree viewing angle instead of the 360-degrees of waste emitted by standard light bulbs. The lamp can stand alone on its weighted base or clamped to a table edge — your choice after forking over $130.

[Via Inhabitat]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Clear minimalist design, nice approach to light angle vs. power. –MT

ef=”http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/122927167/”>Originally posted by Thomas Ricker from Engadget, ReBlogged by Doug on Jun 7, 2007 at 09:51 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on June 7, 2007, 9:51pm

Mythic religions and deepest science use quite different language to say the same thing : the world we leave our little footsteps in, is a shimmer of light and vibration. Zooming in and out on that vibration, Semiconductor present a compilation DVD of their animations to date: “Worlds in Flux”.

Getting To Here And Now
Semi-Conductor = Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt and their PR blurb claims ‘obsessive interests in landscape, architecture, geology, geography, chaos / systems theory and artificial intelligence’. In practical terms (over the last 5-6 years) this has encompassed:
- exploring a large array of digital and analogue animation techniques and processes, combining where possible.
- many residencies, installations, exhibitions and live cinema performances
- ‘Hi-Fi Rise’ - an art DVD compilation in 2001 with an innovative interface, and featuring the work of many artists including People Like Us and Amon Tobin.
- 3 music videos, 4 live cinema pieces and 6 short films.

Spinning The Disc
‘Brilliant Noise’ is perhaps the highlight of the “Worlds in Flux’ DVD, featuring gorgeous black and white time lapsed animations made from close up photographs of the sun’s flicker and dance. That these photographs were sourced from a solar observatory and left unmanipulated was quite a surprise to read, a conscious decision to let the sun’s crackling glory stand on its own. 11 possible soundtracks can be chosen to accompany this dazzling monochromatic display, from artists including Cristian Vogel, Max Richter and Antenna Farm, each adding it’s own sense of atmosphere.

200 nano-webbers is another delicious animation, this one created as a visualisation for Japanese act ‘Double Adaptor’ using custom-made scripting to generate a lovely hybrid of seemingly drawn squiggles and complex structural behaviours and movements. The tangle of elements oscillate with the music and shift towards density interconnection as the song washes along. Very re-watch worthy.

Hooking up with the British Geological Survey nabbed a range of seismic data for Semi-conductor, which they exploited to great effect within ‘All the time in the world’. Converting the data into sound, they used this to jolt portions of a coastline into life, animating segments within a scene and slowly shifting from one location to another, drawing attention to the crust of the earth along the way. Particularly captivating were the fluttering sparks of light that hovered above one section of coastline, illuminating nooks and crannies as they travelled in and out of coastal rock formations.

As well as with my favourite pieces above, the clips on the rest of the disc string together nicely as a range of experiments, each showing a different side of Semi-Conductors fascination with the micro and the macro, the buzzing life within structures that we take for granted most of the time. Notable mentions go to ‘The Sound of Microclimates’ which nicely superimposes animations on top of urban surrounds, ‘Inaudible Cities’ which reaches a stroboscopic, shuddering climax, Green grass of tunnel’ for mum, and ‘Earthquake films’, an earlier piece which reanimates a series of earthquake photos with a variety of masks, 3D experiments and collage play.

On another note, Fatcat records who are releasing this DVD, have of course made it region-free. What makes any larger label believe someone should have to buy another copy of a disc to watch it in another country is beyond me.

Originally by jean poole from { { { { - - Sky Noise — >>> on May 18, 2007, 3:53am

Turns out the ‘megapixel’ resolution of the human eye is around 576. Here’s a few more ways to enjoy that.

Live Audiovisual Sequencing
The Holy Grail is now within reach, but still requires quite a few hacks and workarounds. vjforums.com is a good place to rummage for tips on how to use video applications alongside an audio sequencer like Ableton Live, or how to use Ableton Live to generate midi for both Motion & Final Cut Pro ( useful for
controlling parameters of those programs in a more nuanced manner ). On the VJ side, the VDMX 5 beta is sailing well, it’s learning curves best tackled after a good browse of the vidvox wiki and this VDMX 5 tutorial. Turntablist technique can help with the sequencing too, as ably demonstrated to loud cheers by Cut Chemist at a 2006 gig, scratching a DVD of people in the crowd recorded 2 minutes earlier.

http://fotowoosh.com - is new online software that turns any picture into a 3D image, and surprisingly effective too, analysing the geometry of each image and
then outputting this as a 3D model which can be explored.

http://meatpaper.com : a print magazine of art and ideas about meat. “We like
metaphors more than marinating tips. We are your journal of meat culture.” For all your food writers obsessing with pigs, alphabets made of raw hamburger, and hats of meat needs.

Le Beebs
One million hours of the BBC’s past are going to be made available to the public online. A trial programme has started, which will likely expand to include all of the UK, but others outside will be charged to access the archive.

RSS Feeds
Yes, they totally change the way you use the web, and either save lots of time, or allow a much greater breadth of material to be covered. And they guarantee you don’t miss posts, mp3s, writings from your favourite and newly discovered places. RSS makes blogs and podcasts subscribable, and increasingly can
incorporate different kinds of media. http://marshallk.com/391 shows a few of the possibilities with mixed media RSS feeds ( feeds created for the delivery of video, photos, audio files and other media items all together by RSS. ) For those yet to leap, this 3.5 minute video explaining RSS in Plain English is worth a browse.

‘Master New Media’ give a great round up of all the possible ways video can be annotated online now - including adding subtitles, text, animated shapes and pointers, freehand text and drawings, images, webcam video and even RSS feeds directly into your web-hosted videos.

The $7 TV Network: Neokast brings multicasting to the masses. Enter Neokast, the brainchild of a PhD candidate from Northwestern University, Stefan Birrer. Neokast uses peer-to-peer technology to effectively emulate a multicast experience. If you know what this means, interesting enough.

Google Browser Sync for Firefox
An overlooked extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. Found via - Matt Haughey, aka the guy who founded metafilter.com, and just started a blog about how to survive “professionally screwing around on the web”.

And one for the road, via kottke.org, a 90s slang dictionary.

Tags: vdmx,

Originally by jean poole from { { { { - - Sky Noise — >>> on May 21, 2007, 4:06am

How about that golden era of Turkish Cinema, the 1970s & 80s?

‘Remix culture’ and ‘alternative copyright’ ideas might be popular now ( and why not - with mediamaking tools becoming so easily available? ), but a glance back at Turkish Cinema two decades ago reveals a whole other world of homage techniques. One of the key directors was Çetin Inanç, who apparently owned a cinema (makes integration of “source material” much easier), and often mixed in dozens of sources into his feature films, which were generally action films, remakes and featured masks.

Turkish ‘Star Wars’ (1979 )
( Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam, full length google video )
Rocket science presumably extends even to making models of space ships, which is no doubt an endlessly complex and complicated endeavour. Better then, to just lift entire sequences from another film and cut and paste them into a film whenever spaceships are needed. Close up of Turkish skywalker chatting into some galactic intercom, cut to sequence of ships fighting from another film, cut back to Turkish skywalker - easy! Part of this movie’s fun is noting just how many sci-fi audio and visual samples they have managed to ‘borrow’ in completing their epic adventure.

Bizarrely choreographed fight scenes are enhanced by near random editing cuts and large sonic jumps in volume. And how about that mid-film training in the desert sequence, which seems to involve large paper rocks being tied to the feet of the heroes as they spring through the air from trampolines just below the camera’s view? Worth watching for proof of alternative and parallel universes.

imdb.com sez Turkish Star Wars now has a sequel: Dunyayi Kurtaran Adamin Oglu (The Son of the Man Who Saves The World). See also : Brazilian Star Wars (1978) ( www.imdb.com/title/tt0195360 )
& Italian Star Wars ( 1979 ) ( Star Crash : youtube.com/watch?v=pzfuNSpP0RA )

Turkish ‘Star Trek’ (1973)
( ‘Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda’ - aka Omer the Tourist in Star Trek. clips @ google video )

Turkish Captain Kirk gets attacked by a dozen roaming tarzan robots, and the only inhabitant of a ‘remote planet’ turns out to be a female who will literally kill so that she can lick salt from the skin of humans. Or vulcans - there’s a vulcan Spock of course, who seems to be intimidated by the arrival on board of a Turkish human from the past. All the usual Star trek sounds effects are in full force, albeit not always used in the most consistent of ways, the uniforms evoke the enterprise efficiently, and the set-design seems to take advantage of Turkish scenery as well as cardboard cut out IKEA spaceships.

Turkish ‘E.T.’ ( 1983 )
( ‘Badi’ - youtube.com/watch?v=Tl3a6-sxPqQ )

Sure Spielberg has lots of fancy effects, but the unknown mysteries of space and intergalactic species are just as emotive when channeled through a small man inside a large brown garbage bag with painted on bulbous eyes and oversize rubber gloves. The lack of subtitles on this one aren’t an issue - the plot doesn’t stray far from the original. There’s even a repeat of the infamous bicycle chase scene where a boy on a bmx bike pedals his little heart into the skies to escort E.T. to safe ground. Replace bmx with shopping trolley however, pushed by a bunch of screaming kids, and then superimpose the trolley against the sky so it is half transparent, and for further realism jiggle it around a little to simulate realistic motion. Works a treat.

Turkish ‘Spiderman’ (1973 )
( 3 DEV ADAM aka 3 mighty men aka Captain America and Santo vs. Spider-Man )
( youtube.com/watch+weep )
Who’d have thought the maker of Evil Dead would go on to making Spiderman? Those two worlds are much closer in this epic, Spiderman’s evil persona revealed from the very opening scene. On a secluded beach a man is buried in sand up to his head, and is being interrogated by Spiderman and another character. It’s fairly typical thuggery until the camera zooms out a little and we see a speedboat parked on the shore, complete with outboard motor, which of course is started, and the boat is moved back slowly, while we get a close up of blood splattering all over Spiderman’s face.

Turkish ‘Superman’ - Supermen Donuyor (1979)
Turkish ‘First Blood’ - remains at large, but is allegedly one of the more violent Turkish remakes.
Turkish ‘Wizard of Oz’ - Aysecik ve sihirli cuceler ruyalar ulkesinde (aka Aysecik and the Bewitched Dwarfs, & Aysecik in the Land of the Magic Dwarfs) (1971)
Seytan (aka Satan & Turkish Exorcist) (1974)
Khooni Murda (aka Indian Nightmare on Elm Street) (1989) &
Superman (aka The Indian Superman) (1987)
sound tempting…

Turkish ‘Batwoman’ - still eludes, but hopefully lives up to its amazing poster, send a link if you have it.

Tags: turkish cinema, Çetin, Inanç

Originally by jean poole from { { { { - - Sky Noise — >>> on May 28, 2007, 9:54am

Originally from Pruned on June 11, 2007, 9:12am

Originally from Pruned on June 11, 2007, 9:12am

Originally from Pruned on June 11, 2007, 9:12am

The always helpful Tech-Recipes has come up with an ingenius way to find latitude and longitude values for any location using Google Maps.

You’ll first need to look up an address (duh), but this trick only works if the address is centered (it’s centered by default). So, moving the map around will not make this work. When the address you want to find latitude and longitude for is dead center, copy and paste this code into your browser bar:

javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

You’ll get a popup with the coordinates. How cool is that, I ask you! — Wendy Boswell

Originally from Lifehacker on June 9, 2007, 12:00pm

Hekje (Fence) (2006, 4.2MB, 1:52 min)

If Maurice Bogaert tried this in my local Sainsbury’s
he would be dead meat, so points for a twisted kind of courage.
Amusing, if frothy, item found at BasementArtProject.

Originally from DVblog on June 5, 2007, 2:00am