1942, not today.
More proof that as we are now, they once were, here is a striking gallery of “some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations” from the late 1930s and 40s.
Cool
28
Jun 10
Shot Entirely with an iPhone 4
The following short film was shot and edited, in its entirety, including sound, on the new iPhone 4.0. (Thanks to Daring Fireball for the link.)
“Apple of My Eye” – an iPhone 4 film from Michael Koerbel on Vimeo.
9
May 10
Save the Earth, One Letter at a Time
Ecofont..the holes save ink, money, and the environment.
Ecofont is a software program that allows you to reduce ink or laser toner usage by as much as 25%, thus cutting costs and doing less damage to the environment. Ink and toner production, use and disposal are actually serious issues.
The nice thing is that at almost any normal size the holes are invisible to the naked eye. However, Ecofont claims the impact on your bottom line (if you do a lot of printing) are apparent.
You can either download an ecofont for free, or purchase the software that will allow to turn almost any typeface you normally use into an ecofont.
5
Apr 10
iJealous
Green with envy, red with passion.
Here are my impressions after using a colleague’s new iPad for a few minutes:
- It is heavier than I expected, but in a good way; it has a heft and substance that make it feel like a quality product.
- It is extremely responsive, spritely. Applications launched quickly, scrolling across the desktop felt breezy, and other interactions had little if any lag.
- While I didn’t try thumb typing, the keyboard felt easier to user than I’d expected. I think it would be great if users could scale the keyboard to fit their hand size.
- The display is vivid and bright, and the surface does, in fact, seem to prevent fingerprints (as promised).
- Native apps (those designed for the larger screen) have a wide variety of very interesting UI techniques that would be impossible to replicate on a laptop or smartphone, so expect many new user interaction schemes to abound.
- iPhone apps that haven’t been ported over aren’t as unattractive as I’d expected, and if viewed at normal size (not enlarged) feel just fine, not as small as some had suggested.
- Jason Snell commented that holding a website in your hands felt kind of amazing. I didn’t know what he meant until I opened some sites. Instead of peering into them like you do on a smart phone, you actually do feel like you’re holding the Internet, which is kind of a cool sensation.
- Visiting this blog and seeing the empty blocks where Flash elements (videos, etc.) should be was disheartening. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that there was no icon suggesting the experience was broken. I’m sure from a marketing perspective it makes the experience feel less incomplete, but from a usability perspective, this omission fails to give the user any clue that they are missing what might be a vital part of the experience.
As you might know from reading my earlier posts, I’ve gone from skeptical to excited about the iPad. Now that I’ve held and used one, I’m officially jealous of those who have one.
And this is what I think Apple is hoping for: talking about the iPad is one thing, but I truly believe that once most people hold one, they will want one. This is the reason for Apple’s success: they create products that market themselves.
25
Mar 10
Traffic as Art
From the artist: “One month (October 2009) of traffic information (1534 vehicles) is condensed in a 24h day. An aesthetics driven artifact, mapping traffic intensity in Lisbon. For more information please refer to http://mondeguinho.com/master“
12
Mar 10
What Do You Suggest?
Interactive visualization of Google suggestions.
Okay, I just spent about 30 minutes when I should have been sleeping exploring the interactive visualization of Google suggestions at whatdoyousuggest.net.
The formula is simple: enter a word, and see the tree expand. The topmost words on each branch are the words Google thinks you’re going to type next based on what other users have searched for, and the thickness of each branch relates to the number of results for each word.
A visual search tree.
But enough explaining. Go waste some time!
7
Mar 10
The Clavlilux 2000
From the creator of The Clavilux 2000:
The Clavilux 2000 is an interactive instrument for generative music visualization, which is able to generate a live visualization of any music played on a digital piano. The setting of the installation consists of three parts: A digital piano with 88 keys and midi output, a computer running a vvvv patch and a vertical projection above the keyboard.
For every note played on the keyboard a new visual element appears in form of a stripe, which follows in its dimensions, position and speed the way the particular key was stroke. Colours give the viewer and listener an impression of the harmonic relations: Each key has it’s own color scheme and “wrong” notes stand out in contrasting colors.
All stripes stay and overlap each other in an additive way, so at the end a kind of pattern remains – a summary of the music – which will be always unique since the notes of the composition aswell as the interpretation of the piano player are influencing the outcome. Furthermore the piano player can switch between the standart 2d view and an additional 3d view of the visualization while playing.
5
Mar 10
The Sandpit
The Sandpit is a fantastic video by Sam O’Hare. The image style reminds me a lot of Susan Wides‘ photography.
22
Feb 10
Sites and Sounds
Ever wonder what your website would sound like if translated to music? Probably not. Well, anyway, codeorgan is a website that will take any url and convert it to music using algorithms based on the content it finds there. (Thanks to Carl Lorentzen for sharing this little distraction with me.)
17
Feb 10
Cinema Redux Print
Brendan Dawes' Cinema Redux Print
Coudal is selling what I think might be one of the coolest prints I’ve seen. Here’s their description of it:
“Brendan Dawes’ very special limited-edition based on our unending obsession with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Brendan explains, ‘A specially written piece of software takes a tiny snapshot of the film every second. Each row contains sixty of these frames, representing one minute of film time. This process continues for the whole movie resulting in an image that becomes greater than the sum of its parts, in effect creating a unique visual fingerprint of the film.’ Kubrick geeks must have this.”
In particular, I liked Dawes’ description:
“Cinema Redux is an attempt to make a physical visual representation of an entire movie in the hope that you can show the world – or the visitors to your home at least, your passion for a certain film. Not just a certain scene. Not just one single frame. But the entire film, represented in a new visual form, a kind of cinematic DNA. It’s made entirely from a digital ‘machine’ process. But it’s made for an analog ‘human’ world.”
2
Jan 10
Wordle
Wordle is cool.
Wordle will generate those interesting word-cloud images you see around the Web from words you paste or URLs you provide. On top of that, you can modify a lot of settings to customize your image. The cloud above was generated from the words on the home page of this blog as of January 2, 2010.
16
Jun 09
Color Scheme Designer 3
Hue-rah!
While I firmly believe a talented designer / artist can and probably should create their own color schemes, Color Scheme Designer 3 is an incredibly robust and surprisingly intuitive Flash-based color palette creator that can really help out in a pinch.
11
Jun 09
Rethinking the Agency Web Site
Thinking outside the box.
I was impressed with Modernista’s daring Web site, which was basically a feed pull of Flickr, Wikipedia, Google News, etc. It embraced the idea that the medium is the message, and that you can’t really control your message, so you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.
And when it launched, I also thought it couldn’t be replicated. I mean, the idea is so unique that it can really only be done once; copycats would be just that, copycats.
Then I saw BooneOakley’s new site, which is simply an interactive (navigable) YouTube video. It’s not only quirky and interesting, it’s perfectly-suited to their audience, people considering an ad agency who understands new media.
Nicely done!
31
Mar 09
I Have a Hunch I'll Love Hunch
Have a hunch? Need a hunch?
Okay, this is cool. The beta of hunch.com launched, and I’m loving it!
On the About page of the site, Hunch is described as being “…started by clever folks who were exploring how machine learning could be used to guide practical decision-making.”
Relying on input from users (the more contributors, the better the hunches), the promise is simple: in 10 questions or less, Hunch can help you make almost any decision. “What laptop should I buy?” “Should I join a startup?” “What blog should I read?”
Finally, the promise of the Internet might be realized: we don’t need to think for ourselves! We can just rely on fantastic, sweet, sweet group-think to help us make all our critical life decisions.