An animated timeline of all F1 seasons from 1950 to 2012, created by Rufus Blacklock. If you don’t like motorsports but have an eye for graphic design, you will still love this video.
Evolution of the F1 Car from Ruf Blacklock on Vimeo.
More infographics available on Rufus’s blog at biplaneblues.blogspot.de, as well as a list of sites that featured the video: among others it’s Engadget, Autoweek – and probably many, many more. Another reason to aim for the highest quality you can do.
The first rule for using my computer was, not to play games. A bit later, to play only with those I wrote. Of course I cheated from time to time, but at least I had a few goes making them – only to gain enough experience to know that this is an extremely hard thing to do. Maybe this is why watching Indie Game – the Movie was so catching, but nevertheless, it’s great fun to watch these guys sweating blood and tears for success.
First-time filmmaking duo Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky capture the emotional journey of these meticulously obsessive artists who devote their lives to their interactive art. Four developers, three games, and one ultimate goal – to express oneself through a video game.
You can watch the whole movie online at indiegamethemovie.com.
(In the meantime I get off the shelf my most recent game loop. Muwhahaha!)
As a result of Apple’s recent patent wars we can see now some pictures about the first iPad prototype as it looked in 2002. A piece of history, and also a chance to see how an idea develops into a product before it finally reaches the market – in about a decade.
iPad then and now – more from the old video on NetworkWorld
“I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got [rubber band] scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone.” — Steve Jobs in 2010, at the All Things Digital conference
As for the patent war, I hope that brilliant minds keep chasing their ideas – and don’t mind that others use those to make their own products. In the end, being the only one in the market can be good from the business perspective, but having competitors moves the world forward in a much higher peak. A proof: Apple worked on the iPad for 10 years – for Asus, Acer, Samsung and others it took only a few to catch up.
It’s the middle of Summer, when people either spend their holidays or are in offices, looking for holiday offers and places to visit. During my daily session of such discoveries I bumped into a map, collecting the world’s most touristy places – you may want to visit or avoid them, this map will be of use.
The map on Google Maps
The map has been created by Bluemoon, based on the meta tags of photos uploaded to Panoramio: “Yellow indicates high touristiness, red medium touristiness, and blue low touristiness. Areas having no Panoramio photos at all are grey. The analysis takes into account how many photos and by how many authors there are in a given area.”
How relevant it is for my search is hard to tell – probably not very. According to Facebook’s recent study on which social landmarks people visit the most, whatever masses think is worth visit is simply weird: what is there to see (or at least, check in for) at Kurfürstendamm?
Right after we got used to touchscreen keyboards and threw away our old devices full off buttons, a company wants to bring those keys back. Tactus Technology invented a user interface, where completely transparent physical inputs rise up from the touch-screen surface on demand, all controlled by the applications.
Tactus Technology Introduction from Tactus Technology Inc. on Vimeo.
One could say that for everyday users it’s completely useless to have buttons or physical feedback while typing: most of the people even switch off the haptic feedback while typing on Android. Nevertheless, it could be of use for people who need assistance, or work in a less ideal environment – say, a DJ playing and using an iPad on the stage, and with the Tactile Layer finds all the controls without looking.
We will see. Based on what the guys write on their webpage, the technology could come into our lives as soon as by tomorrow:
With the buttons enabled, users can push and type or rest their fingers as they would with any physical button or keyboard. When the buttons are disabled, they recede into the screen, becoming invisible and leaving a smooth, seamless flat touch-screen with maximum viewing area.
Our Tactile Layer technology easily integrates with today’s touchscreen-based devices (smart phones, tablets, personal navigation systems, gaming devices, etc.) by simply replacing the front layer of the display stack, known as the “lens”, “window” or “cover glass”. Our dynamic Tactile Layer component is the same thickness as the layer it replaces and requires no change to the underlying display or touch sensor.
For the last ten years, if I want to see my inbox when on the road, I know to reach for my phone. This move for me is probably as natural, as it is for my father to check his watch for the time, or, for my future son, to check his whatever social network thing in his glasses. Yet, for me, for now, Internet in glasses is just proper craze.
If you give the task to engineers, to design a device that runs a distance between two points, they will most probably draw something with wheels. Similarly, if you want them to make something that’s connected to the Internet, you will get a screen of any size next to a modem in a soap shaped brick. Based on the proportions you will call it then a tablet or a phone or Galaxy Note.
And there are always those engineers out there who, with a twinkle in the eye, will keep developing those walking robots – until a point, when they are clever enough to actually be used. And then we have to get used to them.
I’m sure Google with the glasses is at this point now. These devices are so new that it’s almost impossible to imagine how we will get on with them: people still try to find out how the iPad fits into their lives, and that basically is just a big phone.
Hopefully by the time this new augmented reality and the non-stop connectivity arrives, we will be clever enough to know when to switch off and gain focus to things that actually matter. Otherwise, the network will have it’s greatest chance yet, to completely suck us in.
If you thought you are connected 24/7, now is time to think again.
The Charite University Hospital in Berlin recently released a video that documents the first birth in an MRI machine. (And it turned out that New Scientists has a video about how the baby got there!)
For the video, go to NewScientist’s webpage.
The video captures the active second stage of labour as the mother expels the fetus. The technique, called cinematic MRI, takes repeated images of the same slice of the body before joining them up to create an ultra-detailed video. It was recently turned on unborn twins for the first time to study a common complication where one fetus receives more of the blood supply and becomes much larger than the other.
By the way, there MRI video about the conception: Human sex from the inside out.
That’s exactly how you start an album. (Pay attention to the lovely lyrics.)
I wanted to write some rather bitching critics about the whole lp, but there’s no need to be bitching here. My three favorite songs: These Spectacles Reveal the Nostalgics, 1000 Answers and My Time is Coming are actually proper Hives ones.
Chemin Vert is an immersive video of a trip on the road at supersonic speed spanning across five continents and four seasons. The title “Chemin Vert” refers to its soundtrack from musician A Ghost Train.
Chemin Vert from Giacomo Miceli on Vimeo.
Giacomo Micheli’s project is another great one that utilizes Google Street View’s pictures and creates something stunning out of it. It’s a beautiful age: we’ve got all the tools, and it’s up to us, what we do with them.
(You might want to watch Address is Approximate by The Theory if you missed it so far.)
Being dependent on someone else’s technology feels bad. Especially if that someone can an does change it’s pricing from time to time – more so, if those changes could completely bail you out of business. That kind of fear builds mountains – or, for iOS 6 a new Maps service that replaces Google Maps.
Every time I design products where we need to use the Google Maps API, I have a certain feeling: the maps are great, we can estimate the short term costs, but the fact is that we are dependent on one vendor. I’m really glad to see that another player is entering the game now.
That’s the business perspective of course. As a user, I’m simply curious. The first screenshots of Maps are not that great (keep in mind that in Europe, we probably will receive that 3D sugar much much later than users in the US), but by doing my research, I’ve found a really promising fact: the new software is based on the services of C3 Technologies, which is a research lab of the SAAB group.
That means, at least in theory, with this technology creating those high resolution 3D maps might be closer than we think. “Since the high-resolution maps are accurately georeferenced, coordinates can be extracted and used for leading indirect fire such as artillery, as well as close air support targeting.”
And, of course, locating the nearest Starbucks.