It’s all about the algorithms.
[www.codeorgan.com]
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496 items (475 unread) in 9 feeds
Items by dan
Dan
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Posted: June 10th, 2010, 6:26pm PDT by dan
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Posted: June 8th, 2010, 1:56pm PDT by dan
Based on information from people uploading travel photos to Panoramio, these maps show exactly what you would expect. Even better than being an image, they have the whole google map mash up thing going on, which is pretty great! How else could you get an idea to travel to the Tibesti mountains?
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Posted: May 13th, 2010, 5:17pm PDT by dan
Interesting idea, an interactive video you can pause and examine the clothing the models are wearing. The price is of course omitted. Looks like this was inspired by the Bande à part dance.
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Posted: May 13th, 2010, 5:14pm PDT by dan
Diaspora – the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.
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Posted: May 5th, 2010, 4:12pm PDT by dan
This is a fun experiment! Runs in FF also, but much slower.
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Posted: April 30th, 2010, 5:15pm PDT by dan
Awesome!
[caniuse.com] -
Posted: April 29th, 2010, 11:43am PDT by dan
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada have developed floor tiles that can simulate the look, sound and feel of snow, grass or pebbles underfoot. Such a tool could perhaps be used for augmented reality applications, tele-presence, training, rehabilitation or even as virtual foot controllers.
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Posted: April 29th, 2010, 11:41am PDT by dan
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Posted: April 29th, 2010, 11:39am PDT by dan
This site askes everyone to look harder at their daily relationship to energy. We created it to help heighten awareness of the toll that energy production and consumption take on our economy, security, health, and natural resources. When we understand more about the realities of American power, we can make wiser choices about energy through conservation and civic action.
Great new website from Pentagram partners that attempts to show a portrait of communities living in the shadow of power plants. There are a few power plants near my house, but they are on a much smaller scale (and more disguised!) than the ones depicted here. The photography is excellent, and the idea for the website is good too. It tries to connect photos through a physical place through the use of a map. I lose my mental map of the images location when scrolling through them all, but they are compelling enough to give the location a backseat.
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Posted: April 29th, 2010, 11:26am PDT by dan
CS5 an Evolution of the Designers Toolbox
Amazingly well done walk through of the design process behind those Adobe icons we’ve come to know and love so much. Some of the new features of CS5 look pretty amazing, don’t know if I can afford the upgrade at this point tho…
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Posted: April 29th, 2010, 11:22am PDT by dan
I pretty much just keep forgetting to post this here. It’s old, but still a great reference. -
Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 5:55pm PDT by dan
I’d like to advance a hypothesis: Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn’t connecting us as much as we think it is. It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.
During the subprime bubble, banks and brokers sold one another bad debt — debt that couldn’t be made good on. Today, “social” media is trading in low-quality connections — linkages that are unlikely to yield meaningful, lasting relationships.
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Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 5:54pm PDT by dan
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Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 5:51pm PDT by dan
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Posted: March 16th, 2010, 12:36pm PDT by dan
This is a really great example of a graphic that calls you to action. Everyone that saw this couldn’t help but to try out what’s going on in the photo. Can YOU???
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Posted: March 16th, 2010, 12:31pm PDT by dan
Alexa Meade is an installation artist based in the Washington, DC area. Her background in the world of political communications has fueled her intellectual interest in the tensions between perception and reality.
Alexa Meade’s innovative use of paint on the three dimensional surfaces of found objects, live models, and architectural spaces has been incorporated into a series of installations that create a perceptual shift in how we experience and interpret spatial relationships.
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Posted: March 9th, 2010, 2:25pm PST by dan
[sloanreview.mit.edu]
This is more for personal reference, I’d like to go back and read some of these articles in the future. Since it’s coming from MIT Sloan, these topics are viewed through the lens of management, but the content still looks pretty interesting. Nice to see how other professions / fields can use the principals of design to achieve better results.Design thinking — distinct from analytical thinking — has emerged as the premier organizational path not only to breakthrough innovation but, surprisingly, to high-performance collaboration, as well. “It’s not about the pretty,” says one design-thinking practitioner, “it’s about the productive.” In this special section of articles, interviews, illustrated cases and research findings, the Review explores how to put design thinking to work.
How to Become a Better Manager … By Thinking Like a Designer
Elegance By Design: The Art of Less
Usability for Evil
Designing Waits That Work -
Posted: March 9th, 2010, 2:04pm PST by dan
[whereismymilkfrom.com]
The UI is crap (you type the milk code into the skewed form on top of the milk carton), but the idea is cool. The milk at my office comes from Franklin, MA, not too far from Boston. Where is yours from? -
Posted: February 2nd, 2010, 2:46pm PST by dan
Uggggggggg, I really really really hope this does not happen!
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Posted: February 1st, 2010, 6:00pm PST by dan
Really cool infoviz project the duo at hint.fm put together about colors seen on Boston Common throughout the year. I’m seeing this one a bit late cos it was originally published in Boston Magazine, maybe I should actually start checking that publication out!Anyway, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg have tons of really interesting projects. Check out Seer also if you have the time.
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Posted: January 29th, 2010, 2:14pm PST by dan
Interesting article from New York Times
The Age of Undoing
Facebook, for instance, allows you to register approval for a posted message in a very concrete way, by clicking a thumbs-up like button. Toggling off the button results in unliking your previously liked item. Note that this is different from disliking something, since unliking simply returns you to a neutral state. This kind of instant reversibility is now an inescapable facet of our digitized life — like it or un-.
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Posted: January 28th, 2010, 3:30pm PST by dan
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Posted: January 28th, 2010, 10:01am PST by dan
Working through Screens is a reference for product teams creating new or iteratively improved applications for thinking work. Written for use during early, formative conversations, it provides teams with a broad range of considerations for setting the overall direction and priorities for their onscreen tools. With hundreds of envisioning questions and fictional examples from clinical research, financial trading, and architecture, this volume can help definers and designers to explore innovative new directions for their products.
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Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 11:27am PST by dan
The N. Building in Japan is one huge QR code that becomes a living website thanks to augmented reality on the iPhone.
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Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 10:54am PST by dan
Here are two cool new ways to track who is consuming your content, and which pieces users find most interesting. First up:
Depending on the site, up to 6% of page loads results in a user copying content. While this may not sound like much, think of it this way: on a site that has 20 million page views per month, content is copied over one million times during any given month. That’s a lot. How do we know this? Tynt’s patent pending Insight technology is currently running on hundreds of thousands of web sites and monitors billions of page loads per month.
This is a potentially very cool idea, however, it’s a bit annoying that they auto-include a link back to the source content. I’d prefer a more ’silent’ solution. According to Tynt, they are: “currently working on providing users an option to opt out of Tynt Insight. If you’d like to disable Tynt Insight immediately, you can use an ad or script blocking tool to disable Tynt Insight.”
Second is:
[speakertext.com]
SpeakerText is an easy-to-use tool that lets you find, read and share what people are saying inside of videos. This is another powerful tool, that’s still in beta. I don’t know if it’s technically possible, but it would be great to see this technology drop Flash as its presentation layer. It could be much easier to spread content like this. For example, you would be able to combine the previous Tynt service to do some pretty wild things! Check out Nieman Labs for more. -
Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 10:43am PST by dan
So, I’ll probably never actually use this stuff now that I’m done with school, but just thought I’d share these links if anyone is interested:
[www.amarino-toolkit.net]
Cell phones are great for communication in a virtual manner, but lack expressiveness in personal surroundings. Many people try to give their phones a personal touch by customizing them. ‘android meets arduino’ is a toolkit to connect Android-driven mobile devices with Arduino microcontrollers via Bluetooth. The toolkit provides easy access to internal phone events which can be further processed on the Arduino open-source prototyping platform. This toolkit seeks to empower people to externalize their phone events to creatively demonstrate them on wearables, living spaces, or other tangibles.[android.processing.org]
Pre-release downloads of Processing with built-in support for Android. Note that this code is incomplete and contains many bugs. It is not ready for widespread use. It should be considered “nightly build” quality. Do not use this code while operating heavy equipment. Do not rely on this code for thesis or diploma work, as you will not graduate. Do not use this code if you’re prone to whining about incomplete software that you download for free. -
Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 10:39am PST by dan
Here is a fun diversion for a moment. Beats are alright, but I would really love to hear someone try out is the Beatles singing over a Wu-Tang beat, or something. You know, flip the convention of these types of releases. I’m not a musician, but I’m sure some talented person could make it work.
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Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 10:35am PST by dan
Here’s a few links I’ve found to test yer sites on. This is really more for me to use so I can remember this stuff in a few months when I need it again, and have forgotten it by that time.
[https:]
An easier, faster solution for cross-browser testing[browsershots.org]
Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here. -
Posted: January 12th, 2010, 5:08pm PST by dan
Look at that exponential curve! Android is really taking off. The iPhone is of course still on top, but it will be interesting to see how Apple’s business strategy will adapt in the face of some real competition.
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Posted: December 28th, 2009, 2:42pm PST by dan
Excellent presentation on design patterns for social sites / applications.
social traction
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Posted: December 15th, 2009, 10:44am PST by dan
Seems a bit self-helpy, but I will probably go through it this week on the commute to work. He definitely got the big names out on this one.
Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here.
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Posted: December 15th, 2009, 10:39am PST by dan
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Posted: November 24th, 2009, 11:23am PST by dan
How would you feel if you had to share a phone amongst your family members, or if you could not afford to by a phone. This is the case for many millions of people living in Kenya at the Base of the Pyramid, living in poverty on an income of less than $2 a day; and yet many of these people understand how mobile phone technology can save them money in their day to day activities and increase their earning potential. This video explores how people living below the poverty line in Kenya use mobile phones.
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Posted: November 24th, 2009, 11:20am PST by dan
A few excellent posters (+etc), created by Paul Gabor, a Hungarian designer during the 30’s to 50’s (or so). -
Posted: November 18th, 2009, 3:21pm PST by dan
Here is a powerful mode of communication with mobile technology. Made by the Mobile Art Lab in Japan.
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Posted: November 17th, 2009, 11:38am PST by dan
Tetris and Arduino together at last. I would definitely, definitely play this version of the game, even if I would not get a high score.
Tetris Mashup!
tetris meets Arduino from Luyza Pereira on Vimeo.
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Posted: October 29th, 2009, 10:12am PDT by dan
Just found some interesting content about how media will be delivered in the future, and the future of the web. I guess Thursdays are a forward thinking day of the week.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, interviewed at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009 (06:10) -
Posted: October 14th, 2009, 2:23pm PDT by dan
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Posted: October 13th, 2009, 2:11pm PDT by dan
This is a valiant effort to redesign some of our most basic interactions with the computer. The multi-touch will definitely be included more and more in future interfaces… but, using all 10 fingers? I think many people already have enough trouble with just the mouse. Maybe this would be effective in some sort of specialized application…
Also, when I’m thinking about the hardware for this stuff… it pretty much just seems like a new MacBook to me…
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Posted: October 13th, 2009, 2:05pm PDT by dan
[the Rationalizer concept is] an emotion sensing system targeted at serious home investors who trade online. It acts as an ‘emotion mirror’ in which the intensity of the user’s feelings is reflected. Research shows that home investors do not act purely rationally: their behavior is influenced by emotions, most notably fear and greed, which can compromise their ability to take an objective, factual stance. This insight led to the Rationalizer concept in which online traders are alerted when it may be wise to take a time-out, wind down and re-consider their actions.
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Posted: October 7th, 2009, 5:32pm PDT by dan
Anyone can use Photoshop now! Even you people that say you can’t draw, I know you can draw a stick figure, I know it. The real site is down now due to high interest, but I think this is real nevertheless.
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Posted: September 8th, 2009, 3:42pm PDT by dan
Check out this amazing branding / identity work done for the city of Melbourne.
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Posted: September 8th, 2009, 3:40pm PDT by dan
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Posted: August 27th, 2009, 3:36pm PDT by dan
Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.
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Posted: August 20th, 2009, 3:16pm PDT by dan
Dang, this is some pretty interesting writing about online communities (wikipedia in particular), and where they are going. There is a whole mess of links at the bottom of the page I will click on later when I have time.
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Posted: August 18th, 2009, 2:37pm PDT by dan
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Posted: August 18th, 2009, 11:47am PDT by dan
Sasquatch is using the same technology that powers the Reac-table and qr codes and stuff.
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Posted: August 4th, 2009, 3:43pm PDT by dan
[www.youmightfindyourself.com]
These are probably the most interesting business cards I’ve seen. I love that they not only get across the business the owner is in, but they give the receiver a little taste of what it’s all about. Very cool
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Posted: July 31st, 2009, 3:35pm PDT by dan
Really cool data visualization here. It seems a little too much like entertainment to me tho… I hope in the next version you can see if your representitives are keeping their promises. Then either send them a “good job” or a “boo to that” note.
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Posted: July 30th, 2009, 2:11pm PDT by dan
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Posted: July 30th, 2009, 2:09pm PDT by dan
Cool looking photography / video of bugs flying around a street light at night.
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Posted: July 30th, 2009, 2:08pm PDT by dan
I know everyone already knows about this, I just always forget about it.
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Posted: July 14th, 2009, 9:16am PDT by dan
HCI Bibliography : Human-Computer Interaction Resources
A terrible looking, excellent reference. -
Posted: July 10th, 2009, 4:42pm PDT by dan
This is the last TdF link, I swear! It’s a cool concept that just happens to involve bikes this time. It is a common tradition for cycling fans to write messages to their heros. This is no common letter, fans will camp out on mountain tops for days, spending time covering the roadside with chalkly words of encouragement. This is usually along the lines of “ALLEZ SCHLEK”, drawings of bicycles, or similar. The Chalkbot allows people to send it texts, and then it sprays that message on the ground.
Built in partnership with the Livestrong foundation, its main goal is to raise cancer awareness. I like this concept, as it allows people who’s lives are affected by cancer, to leave a message in this tradition, even if they are too far away, or too weak to do it themselves. I hope I get to see some of these messages sprayed on a stage soon!
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Posted: July 10th, 2009, 10:50am PDT by dan
Great article at Read Write Web about new facial recognition software. Can be used on mobile platforms or integrated on any website! Looks like flickr and facebook want this as well, to allow customers to auto tag their friends in uploaded photos.
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Posted: June 30th, 2009, 12:53pm PDT by dan
This is an interesting idea, similar to the NikeFit concept. Cyclists can form teams, working with and compete against others from around the world. Then everyone gets to see how they stack up against the pros. I think this is a great idea to get people working together, and for getting them interested in your company/product.
For the first time ever, you can ride in the Tour de France. No, you won’t be the newest rider on Lance’s team, but you can race VIRTUALLY against Lance and all the other pros.
How does it work? Easy, just get out and RIDE YOUR BIKE. Starting on July 4th with the first stage of the Tour you can ride in one stage or every stage of the Le Tour Challenge.
Submit your ride to MapMyRide.com and we’ll do the rest. We’ll take your ride and put you VIRTUALLY in the Tour. Yep, that is right, we will tell you how you would have done had you ridden in that day’s stage. -
Posted: June 30th, 2009, 12:47pm PDT by dan
I think my next trip will be to NYC to check this bad boy out. I’m pretty amazed with the amount of time it took to get this project together, keeping the idea close to the original inspiration the whole time. Diller + Scofidio never fail to amaze.
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Posted: June 30th, 2009, 12:43pm PDT by dan
Designing Social Interfaces Wiki
The Designing Social Interfaces patterns wiki is a companion site to the book that Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone are currently writing for O’Reilly Media.
We decided to share the patterns as we write the patterns and the book to get community feedback. We think that hearing a variety of opinions about these topics will make the material stronger and more representative of what’s happening in social interfaces. As we complete sections of the book, we will be adding the patterns.
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Posted: June 30th, 2009, 12:38pm PDT by dan
This is a cool project that came through the lab. It is many many things rolled into one, but the basic concept is a motorized wheel that can be quickly and easily attached to any bicycle.
As I was the only person in the lab who rides, I got to be the model for a few of the scenes!
Green Wheel – Smart Mobility & Ubiquitous Computing from MIT Mobile Experience Lab on Vimeo. -
Posted: March 26th, 2009, 10:54am PDT by dan
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Posted: March 19th, 2009, 5:32pm PDT by dan
http://ohhello.tv/index.php/work/view/microsoft_sustainability/
Check out this new concept of the future from Microsoft + friends. When I see something like this I always have two distinct reactions. The first is, wow! Damn, does that ever look amazing! Then I think, what In the future we will all jet around the globe and have million dollar homes in exclusive locations? It just doesn’t seem very sustainable to me.
It’s def worth watching, but I always wish someone would do this with a “grittier” feel. What will the taxis look like in the future? What about all that traffic? Show us some creative way with dealing with problems like these… Whatever, I would totally use that cellphone directional projection tho! When is that coming???
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Posted: March 16th, 2009, 10:16am PDT by dan
[www.sensenetworks.com]
[www.citysense.com]
[www.technologyreview.com]Citysense is an innovative mobile application for real-time nightlife discovery and social navigation, answering the question, “Where is everybody going right now?”
Citysense shows the overall activity level of the city, top activity hotspots, and places with unexpectedly high activity, all in real-time. Then it links to Yelp and Google to show what venues are operating at those locations. Citysense is a free demonstration of the Macrosense platform that everyone can enjoy.
Unfortunately, it’s only available in San Francisco for now. Scott, are you on this?
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Posted: March 16th, 2009, 10:12am PDT by dan
This is a very cool concept by Israeli producer Kutiman. He’s spent months scowering youtube for interesting clips, and editing them all together into seven quite good songs. This could be compared to DJ Shadow’s album Entroducing… which was the first album entirely comprised of samples.
I found it very powerful how these “unknowns”, who are only doing it for the love of their music, are suddenly heard an appreciated by millions of youtube surfers.
Expect to see a lot more of this stuff in the near future. I don’t think the copycats will get to this level of quality anytime soon tho!
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Posted: February 17th, 2009, 3:14pm PST by dan
Yes, you’ve seen the TED talks, here is another thing that has similar content that I did not know about.
FORA.tv helps intelligent, engaged audiences get smart. Our users find, enjoy, and share videos about the people, issues, and ideas changing the world.
We gather the web’s largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences. We present this provocative, big-idea content for anyone to watch, interact with, and share –when, where, and how they want.
