Willard Wiggen: The something in nothing

Have you heard of this guy? He creates sculptures that are microscopic to the naked eye. The end result looks so great it hard to put ut all together and realize he is using materials like eye lashes to create these works of art.

His work and physical capabilities to produc such work “has baffled medical science and has been the subject of many discussions among micro-surgeons, nano-technologists and at universities worldwide. His work is both inspirational and ground breaking in both artistic and scientific spheres.”

You can see him on Conan O’brian here »

The middle

im in the corner
sitting is easy
thinking of the things i wanted to be
math is upon us
and lisp is he speaking
the brightes of sky but the darkest of day

tight lips do catch us
and whispeirng is easy
fooling your slef as to what yo should be
tango and dancing
the steps are the thinking
but the music has challace and cheers on thier way

trash and the heaps of it
scattered inside me
the in-dig-a-nation to inspire the fame
confidnce is weekness
and what is the measure
and chasing perfection when its perfectly sain

seek with a caution
get carried away
beutiful what nots the most desprate of things
balanced in chaos
intimite mieetings
closing the night and then opening the day

Liu Bolin: Artist

My friend Ryan turned me on to this cool Chinese artist that has made a name for himself with intriguing sculptures that incorporate human figures within common settings or objects. More predominantly and most intriguing to me is his Camouflage art where he paints himself as the setting he stands in front of creating this transparent looking effect. The image on the left is an example of this all natural no Photoshop used camouflage transparency art.

Camoflague
Camoflague
dafasf
Outdoors
dafasf
Leader
dafasf
Handshake

New keyboard

Very cool, I love simple changes in technology that make way for completly new ways of doing common tasks. Like this subtle change in keyboard interaction. This keyboard uses pressure to interpret keystorokes. This allows users to add more demension to your typing or game playing.  For instance, if you are shouting in your text simply press each key harder…..Anywho, it’s pretty neat check out the video.

More on the program:

UIST (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology) is the premier forum for innovations in the software and technology of human-computer interfaces. Sponsored by ACM’s special interest groups on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI) and computer graphics (SIGGRAPH), UIST brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse areas that include traditional graphical & web user interfaces, tangible & ubiquitous computing, virtual & augmented reality, multimedia, new input & output devices, and CSCW. The intimate size, the single track, and comfortable surroundings make this symposium an ideal opportunity to exchange research results and implementation experiences.

http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2009/

Todays Tech: Editorial

Being part of the industrial revolution must have been amazing. I use to wish I was around during a revolution of that size as I would have wanted to take risks and catch the business wave as early as I could.  Like being around when Bill Gates started MicroSoft. How could people have thought it was a fad, or rejected such an practical, obvious, beneficial product? Computers and software changed the way life happens and a majority of the population were/are late adopters. These last few years have been the beginning of yet another great revolution in my eyes and I wasn’t going to pas it up.  I cant believe how many thought/think the technologies of today are a fad, many of those nah sayers who argued in my and coworkers face and mocked the industries goals are forgotten (lucky for them) and from only 1 year ago! More and more are getting on the ride. Im glad I started giving it my all early on, no regrets.

We still have a long way to go. Those who said Facebook was a fad are now on FaceBook with the rest of their family and friends and use it fairly often. What’s more disturbing is how often I over hear people on FaceBook or in passing that scream how much Twitter is a useless fad……I guess we just need to give them a few years in which I suspect that they will be bashing yet another new technology, but will do it using Twitter.

Even the most basic and useful forums of social media get bashed to this day, often purely for cultural reasons in which technology in many peoples eyes equal sub par information and practicality. I don’t know how many times I’ve over heard intelligent people bashing any information found on Wikipedia. Although not perfect it’s easy to for get that Webster and Britannica were all originally missions of one man traveling the globe. One man one perspective asking strangers and alike what they knew to be knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants. Accuracy is subjective and in this case a multitude of subjective persons might be more powerful and “true” then a single man is the final say.

Let’s try harder to find use in things that catch on or connect us all, that increase our perspective across greater bounds whether it be 100% accurate or not. If we are brought together and information is shared more readily then we are only following a path set thousands of years before us first with smoke signals, then to written stone, bibles, printed news, telegraphs and phones, radio and TV, internet and social media. Let us allow ourselves to find the good, as we have so reluctant at each point of our past, in connecting with one another and decipher the positive gains in mediums that do just that.

iPhone, Safari, and HTML5, Oh My!

iPhone Video
iPhone Video

iPhone Safari is purpoted to be trying to release HTML5’s newest spec that allows video tags. This means that we will soon be able to watch video inline easily not only on the web in general but on our pretty little phones.

Some of you may be saying, “I already can playvideo on my phone”. Which although true isnt really the whole picture. Have you noticed that when there is video you must play in in a seperate quicktime panel that pops out. Witht the inclusion of this new spec you will be ale to just press play from within the web  page.

For developers this also menas that including images in a pahge will be as easy as using a simple <video> tag as appose to needing to use a plugin like quicktime or flash. As Isaac put it, we are one step closer to getting rid of flash.

Example:

<video src=”http://www.ananova.com/about/vap_windows_check.wmv”&gt;
your browser does not support the video tag
</video>

New RadioHead single

RadioHead
Radiohead

Harry Patch (In Memory of)

Thom Yorke, one of my favorite creators of melodically interesting sounds has put out a new song called Harry Patch and debuted it a few days ago.

As usual the Radiohead guys are bypassing labels and selling the song through their website and all proceeds go towards a good cause.

As for background on the song, Harry Patch was the last living UK World War 1 Veteran, he was 111 years old. Radiohead released this single in order to make sure he is not forgotten.  The song is a tribute to Harry, as well as a fundraiser for the Royal British Legion.

The Sun reported that the family was enamoured over the song, “Our family is very touched thatRadiohead has reached out to its followers and especially the younger generation through the single that echoes” and that Harry “.

Patch was buried on August 6th 2009  in Wells, Somerset, with a public service taking place in Wells Cathedral.


Politifact

Politifact
Politifact

I heard about this site while listening to an interview on NPR. In this interview the host asked thier guest some questions as to why “they are so angry” at thier local senator. The guest replied that he is a liar and signed bills to allow a rediculous measure in an unwanted bill. She was irate at the situation, what was interesting is how the host then turned to a guest from Pilitifact who seemed to have researched the case and found taht many of the angry protesters points were driven by rumors as the references to documents they made were unsubstantiated. Now I am perfectly aware that Politifact is yet another level of abstraction from the “real truth” just like any other news agency.  What is interesting to me, after I browsed around thier site is the fact that they give you thier opinion and consolidate every reference and statement into linkable sources on the right hand gutter of the web page. It’s like having your own senate secratary gathering the facts for you so you can make your own informed descisions on a topic.

Fact-o-meter Ex.
Pants on Fire

They give a summary of statment or claims made by our politicatns and then exmine their refernces and sources and rate how true the statememnt is on a “truth -o-meter”.  Their meter varies from basic true or fals all the way down to “Pants on Fire” for those claims made that are not only exagerated but baseless.

Pulitzer
Pulitzer

They also show you links to all the references and sources they reveiwed so you can digg into the claims yourself and form your own opinion. The site definitely fills a need and will ecome popular enough so that our politicians are more careful when trying to exagerate claims just to gain the viewers attention. ALso a nice reference for Politifact is thier wininnging of the 2008 pulitzer for national reporting after only being luanched in 2007.

Boxee

Boxee
Boxee

Isaac just demoed a great peice of software for the mac or PC called Boxee. Boxee is loaded on your computer and plays online video from hundreds of sources including videos from your local hard drive, hulu, youtube, and digg. Simply hook your computer up to your TV and watch these shows and click through options and menus with your remote. Best of all its an open source project so downloading is free and you are able to improve the product or add your own video modukes as you please.

Since Boxee allows you to login to your favorite social networks you can see what friends are watching while you watch and more. The bads: since it’s open source and downloaded software when a web site  that boxee pulls from is changed those interfaces in Boxee fail as well until you download a newer build. Its a great tool and relly merges computer with tv experience, definitly a project that has been needed for a long time and meant for the open soure community.

See more about what Boxee can do below: