From the category archives:

Technology

Precision Information Environments

May 11, 2010

The last time I posted a video for all the futurists out there, we'd never even heard of an "iPad." It's amazing how that device has made clips like these seem so much closer to reality. This one is based on research from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on a class of emergency management interfaces called PIE's: Precision Information Environment. [...]

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iPad: magical indeed

May 3, 2010

CrunchGear has a post up called Apple: Can we stop with the "magical" already? - aimed at Apple's iPad marketing, which refers to the device as "magical and revolutionary." The author feels "that Apple’s dedication to the “magical” party line is a bit disingenuous" because the iPad, yes, is not actually a magical device. For [...]

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More iPad Dashboard speculation

February 4, 2010

Kevin Fox is on board the Dashboard train that I wrote about a short while ago. Having seen the sparsity of the iPad screen, and how strange iPhone-scale apps look when zoomed, I'm liking the idea more and more. Plus it would enable some form of multitasking... (Via John Gruber)

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Office 2010's 3D pie charts... now with extra 3D!

January 25, 2010

Microsoft has announced the system requirements for Office 2010. That's news in and of itself. Once upon a time, system requirements (at least, ones that anyone paid attention to) were strictly for high-end professional software, cutting-edge games and the like: software that actually needed powerful hardware. But the real news here is that Office 2010 [...]

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Debating 3D TV

January 19, 2010

Here's an interesting case study in internet behavior dynamics: when Engadget publishes a story -- any story -- about 3D TVs, the comments are filled with fans and excited (potential) consumers. When the NYT publishes a story called "Do Consumers Really Want 3-D TV's?" the comments overflow with doubters and pessimists. Thanks to the magic [...]

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Tablet OS = Dashboard?

January 17, 2010

There's a lot of speculation out there regarding the form of Apple's tablet OS: will it be the iPhone OS in an expanded resolution? Will it be a stripped down version of Snow Leopard? Will it be something new entirely? If you're using a Mac right now, hit F12. That's my bet at what the [...]

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The Microslate

January 6, 2010

This could be extremely interesting. Especially if it looks like this. But it might not.

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The fine print

January 4, 2010

From the "that's a feature, not a bug" file: I always thought my iPhone's ability to continue email searches on the server (as opposed to emails stored on the phone) was broken, since it never returned any results even for emails I knew existed. Today, I learned that remote search is explicitly not supported, according [...]

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Nexus One: "not very different than the Droid"

January 4, 2010

Engadget has gotten their hands on Google's Nexus One phone and while further details will be forthcoming at Google's press event on Tuesday, they have a pretty in depth preview. The most important takeaway is that despite the iPhone-launch-esque frothing of the technology media at large, this is not a revolutionary phone. A couple weeks [...]

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Learn to program!

December 24, 2009

Following a post by Aleks Jakulin, I found a great site that presents an interactive Ruby prompt married to an extremely user-friendly tutorial: Try Ruby. I don't know Ruby at all, but I followed the tutorial for a bit and quickly felt comfortable with the basic syntax. I'm not a perfect candidate to judge this for [...]

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Cameron and Jackson on CGI in film

December 23, 2009

Slate has posted a great interview with James Cameron and Peter Jackson - arguably the two leading directors when it comes to special effects in film (in fact, Jackson's Weta Workshop executed most of the FX shots for Cameron's Avatar). Of course, the discussion centers on an enthusiastic embrace of CGI, reflecting a belief that [...]

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Breathtaking

December 22, 2009

We've come a long way since Powers of Ten... (Also see the AMNH videos that this one is responding to for some more amazing visualizations.) (via Infosthetics)

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In space, no one can hear your gyroscopes

December 22, 2009

In a thoroughly exciting/depressing (depending on your perspective) article, Joseph Shoer has written up his thoughts on the realities of space combat - and it's not all about dogfights and laser beams. Instead, it's about spherical warships firing physical projectiles from a variety of orbits. Need to change direction? Save your thrusters - you have a giant [...]

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Google Phone addendum

December 13, 2009

CrunchGear may be focusing on the hardware, I'm going to focus on the competition: the most salient outcome of Google's decision not to partner with a carrier is that people will be able to discriminate among carriers based on network quality rather than phone features. This is big (though lest I sound hypocritical, I dont [...]

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The Google Phone: this doesn't change very much at all (yet)

December 13, 2009

In their usual over-enthusiasm for all things with touchscreens (too soon?), CrunchGear has been gushing over Google's rumored phone. Google has confirmed that they are working on "a device" without further specifics. That hasn't stopped CrunchGear from actually writing: ...if and when Google starts selling this thing, prepare for some of the strangest – and [...]

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If you're watching this, it's not the future yet

November 12, 2009

It's been a while since I posted a video for the futurist set, so here we go: (This one is a commercial production for Freeband, heavy on the infographics and benefits of smart networking with a pinch of cheesiness. Sign me up.) (via Datavisualization.ch)

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HDR comes to the NYT

November 12, 2009

Well, almost.

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How to market your eReader

November 9, 2009

This is so much nicer than this, especially because they provide this. Looks like B&N took a page from the Apple playbook; Amazon borrowed from Microsoft.

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Pun watch: Chrysler edition

October 27, 2009

Front page of today's WSJ: Fiat Models to Drive Chrysler. On the plus side, the Alfa Romeo brand will be making its way to our shores.

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Bloomingdales' hi-tech showcase?

October 26, 2009

Confession: I got lost in Bloomingdales. This turned out to be a Very Good Thing, because it's how, way in the back of the women's cosmetics department, I discovered that Bloomingdales has a glasses-free 3D television set. The screen itself is unassuming, and positioned as the backdrop to a small un-manned display table, just like [...]

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There's an app for that

October 22, 2009

Steve Ballmer fires across the bow: "Let's face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone," Ballmer said. "That's why they've got 75,000 applications — they're all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone." I'm not sure what's more amusing - the absurdity of [...]

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Colors of Harvard Square

October 22, 2009

From Cartogrammar, an absolutely brilliant application of the Flickr API produces this map of the colors of Harvard Square: The map was created by taking geocoded photos from Flickr and calculating the average hue of the photograph, then plotting that color on the map and interpolating between all the resulting points. Astoundingly, this image shows [...]

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Voxel Octrees

October 22, 2009

Tom's Hardware has a nice overview of voxel rendering with octrees, John Carmack's championed alternative to ray tracing. Nothing revolutionary here but a good read - though I remain in the ray tracing camp rather than the ray casting one.

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Bridge of the future, car of the past

October 14, 2009

The NYT has an article up about a new generation of bridges designed by the University of Maine. The bridges take advantage of new composite materials and can be built relatively cheaply, and the technology is being pitched as a means of patching up the United States' aging infrastructure. Accompanying the NYT article is one [...]

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Ferrari 458 in motion (x2)

September 25, 2009

The goal of any automotive film is to convey the pure sensation of driving at speed - and few are as successful as Ferrari's latest promotion for the new 458 Italia, embedded here for your driving pleasure. The disclaimer in the beginning notes that no special effects are used and the implied message is that [...]

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iPhones support push gmail!

September 22, 2009

Finally. I've been using Google's contact and calendar syncing increasingly, to the point that they are almost indispensable to me. Most critically, when my last iPhone broke I only had to wait a few seconds for my new one to download all of my information from the cloud. The addition of push email completes Google Sync's basic [...]

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Yurtle the Turtle had nothing on this!

September 21, 2009

Visualizing the view from the top of the Burj Dubai - if it were located in NYC.

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You say series, I say season

September 20, 2009

Catching up on my Top Gear this afternoon, I noticed at the end of the episode that the voiceover announced that next week is the "season finale" and not the "series finale" I expected of the British show. Given that the show is broadcast here on BBC America, are the voiceovers re-recorded for our shores? [...]

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I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords

September 17, 2009

Why waste your time with those "Did You Know?" videos (the fourth one has just been released; in lieu of a link please accept my earlier criticisms) when you can see the wonders of the future right here: I found the phone-catching demonstration near the end particularly astounding. (Via Spontaneous Symmetry)

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