Apparently, the White House Press Corp shares my interest in technological shifts from paper to digital. I’m a research scientist at a company that makes photocopiers — I wonder what their excuse is?
Paperless office gets political Read More »
Microsoft Office Labs has come out with a very nice “vision of the future video” called “2019” — Long Zheng over at iStartedSomething has posted both a short montage and longer 5 minute version (I recommend the longer).
I’ve always loved these sort of concept videos from corporate reserach labs, and as the medium goes I’d rate this one pretty high. The production value is top-knotch (as are most other such videos from Microsoft). As you’d expect, there are many kernels of ideas that have been around — I was especially reminded of Hiroshi Ishi’s ClearBoard, Jun Rekimoto’s Pick-and-Drop and various aspects from Bruce Tognazzini’s Starfire concept video — but there were still many concepts that were new to me. And unlike so many concept videos out there they seem to have mostly avoided the trap of assuming that devices will have a combination of strong AI and psychic powers.
Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019 Read More »
Augmented reality meets Twitter meets CafePress? Something like that — squidder.com has hacked together PaperTweet3d, basically a barcode that encodes your Twitter username on your shirt plus an augmented-reality system that automatically overlays your latest tweet over it.
PaperTweet3d: Augmented Reality T-shirts from squidder on Vimeo.
Wearing your tweets on your sleeve Read More »
Nicholas Carlson at The Silicon Alley Insider does the math.
Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle Read More »
Very cool article and movie about how the makers of Coraline used 3D printers to create individual facial expressions and other effects. So would that make Coraline a CG stop-motion animation?
Using 3D printers to create individual frames for Coraline Read More »
From Bob Park’s What’s New:
Putting astronauts on space stations is like putting little human tellers inside ATM machines.
President Obama’s comments yesterday:
We can’t embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face; that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or falling schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees. I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV — if you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.
In case you’re wondering, here’s what that cliff looks like. (From House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, via swampland.)
Meanwhile, Republicans are doing their damnedest to scuttle the bill entirely, or at least to convince everyone that what this economy needs is even more tax cuts! Because, you know, they’ve worked so well so far.
I’ve heard speculation that the only thing the remaining Republicans fear more than a complete economic meltdown is the possibility of Obama getting credit for saving us from one, and they’re willing to screw the entire country to avoid that fate. Me, I’m guessing Republican leaders have secretly cornered the market on generators, kerosene and ammunition, and plan to make a killing once everything collapses.
Update 2/10/2008: Justin Fox and William Polley have put up some more complete versions of the graph.
As many of you know, since 1990 my friend Jay and I have exchanged Christmas gifts that have been booby-trapped in some way. Since last year around this time I was getting married (and have thus been a little distracted from blogging), I’ve fallen behind in posting details of these traps. I hope to be a little faster in posting this year’s traps, but in the meantime I’ve finally posted Jay’s trap from last year: a particularly nasty trap that sets off ten individual bottles of diet-coke-and-mentos geysers on any would-be MacGyver who triggers it. I’ve also posted my own version of his trap which, while it’s not as pretty on the outside, does win out when it comes to the size of the mess it leaves behind. Enjoy!
Diet Coke and Mentos Traps Read More »
Henry Gustav Molaison, the amnesiac known publicly only as H.M., died on Tuesday at age 82. Molaison’s inability to create new memories since a brain surgery 55 years ago has greatly contributed to our understanding of how memory works.
H.M. dies after 55 years of living in the moment Read More »
Typealyzer claims to be able to determine the Myers-Briggs personality type of someone just by analyzing their blog. It’s still in beta, which may be why they list me as an ISTJ (“The Duty Fulfillers”) — the exact opposite of how every other Myers-Briggs personality test classifies me.
Do your blog posts reveal your personality type? Read More »
