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W.

Writing with 8pen

By In Blog, Technology0 Comments

Producing a character is easy, fast, and feels like hand-writing. Once familiar with the position of the letters, writing can even be done without viewing.

[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OuCR0EpGo’]

Putting the old keyboard on small touch screens is a typical locked-in-phenomenon when hardware evolves but the underlying ideas don’t follow. This may produce really frustrating experiences; remember Ellen’s iPhone parody?

[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulN_Xuoxzg4′]

Fortunately a touch enabled device is by definition a quite flexible user interface. Now the people at 8pen came up with a great idea. Forget the concept of pressing buttons on a keyboard to type in your thoughts. 8pen is reinventing keyboards and handwriting at once, combining gestures, 4 sectors and 1 button to produce a character on a touch screen.

It’s not your fingers that are too big, it’s the keyboard that is out of date.

Thank you 8pen for putting it correctly!

P.

Paris vs NYC

By In Art, Blog, Culture, Visualization0 Comments

A visual but friendly match between those two cities seen by a lover of Paris wandering through New York’s infinite details, clichés and contradictions.

Paris vs NYC - Pierre de taille vs Brick
(c) Vahram Muratyan - parisvsnyc.blogspot.com

Vahram Muratyan, a curious mind and talented designer, reduced the differences between Big Apple and the City of Light to the essential. As a result he shows us great visualizations of urban lifestyle on both sides of the Atlantic. I appreciate his minimalist approach amongst all those overloaded infographics of our days.

It would be interesting to see other cities matched, too. Berlin could be especially funny, with “Mietskaserne”, “Kaffee Latte”, “Trinkgeld”, “Grünanlagen”, “Mülltrennung” etc.

For many more matches between the two cities have a look at parisvsnyc.blogspot.com and follow @parisvsnyc on Twitter!

Paris vs NYC - Espresso vs Americano
(c) Vahram Muratyan - parisvsnyc.blogspot.com
Paris vs NYC - Pourboire vs Tip
(c) Vahram Muratyan - parisvsnyc.blogspot.com
Paris vs NYC - Espace vert vs Go green
(c) Vahram Muratyan - parisvsnyc.blogspot.com
Paris vs NYC - Tri sélectif vs Recycling
(c) Vahram Muratyan - parisvsnyc.blogspot.com
G.

Glitch Art – The Beauty of Imperfection

By In Art, Blog, Books, Technology0 Comments

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” (Marilyn Monroe)

In a technical sense a glitch is the unexpected result of a malfunction. The term is thought to derive from the German glitschig, meaning ‘slippery.’ Glitches are mostly a result of miscommunication or mistranslation when transferring data in software, video games, images, video and audio. The term glitch came to be associated with music and visual arts in the mid 1990s to describe a general aesthetic of the digital age.

Iman Moradi, the first official glitch theorist, has written extensively on the subject of glitch art beginning with his dissertation for the University of Huddersfield (PDF) until the publication of his recently released book Glitch: Designing Imperfections.

Moradi divides glitch art in two categories: The first is the pure glitch which is the result of a malfunction or error, an unpremeditated digital artifact. The second is the glitch-alike which is the result of an intentional decision on the user side.

All those who didn’t see the beauty in category one glitches yet should definitely consider reading this eye-opening book to brighten up their life: losing all the data on your hard drive eventually becomes art next time.

All category two artists trying to create there first own glitches should open WordPad on a Windows PC and follow stAllio’s short introduction.

Related post: IOgraph – Everyone is an artist

T.

The Presidents’ Guide to Science

By In Blog, Education, Science0 Comments

Scientists created the entire architechture of the 20th century: radio, television, X-rays, Radar, MRI; all of that sprung forth from the mind of a scientist. When people come up to me and say: “You’re a physicist. But what have you guys done for me lately?”, my answer is: “EVERYTHING!” (Michio Kaku)

A few weeks before the US presidential election in 2008, BBC horizon produced a 50 minutes documentary entitled “The Presidents’ Guide to Science”. BBC argues that science and technology in large part provide the immense power to “the world’s most powerful man” (war, health care, energy, …) while most US presidents – like most heads of government around the world – have no background in science. That’s why the BBC asked some of the big names in science to share some words of advice. It couldn’t be verified whether the US president watched it or not. But what the scientists have to say is smart, fascinating and interesting for all of us, not only for presidents.

D.

Doing Homework with a Search Engine Optimized Brain

By In Blog, Education, Technology1 Comment

Mother: ”Turn off the iPod.” ”Stop with the video chat!” ”NO TEXTING while you’re supposed to be doing homework!”

Son: ”MOM! Stop. I can concentrate better with music on.”

Daughter: ”I need the video chat on. I’m going over homework with my friends.”

(debbiestier)

Sounds familiar? In the above CBS News video neuroscientist Gary Small explains how technology may be making us smarter and why it may be good to let our kids become internet savvy multitaskers. Hopefully, they never forget that communication isn’t concentration, and information isn’t education. Fortunately, so far no one bars a search engine optimized brain from reading a book.