2009 Jul 20, 5:04"We had five people, over about six months, research and come up with the tens of thousands of words present on the Scribblenauts dictionary."
game scribblenauts videogame nintendo dictionary 2009 Jul 1, 6:21"The QR code, used to store and decode small bits of data via printed symbol, received an artistic rendering by SET as part of its campaign for Marc by Marc Jacobs." I like the idea although in this
case its not very subtle or different from a regular QR code IMHO. Also, I was surprised that my phone could still read the QR code in this form.
qr qrcode marketing art internet mobile technical 2009 Jun 2, 12:51"The Artvertiser is an urban, hand-held, augmented-reality project exploring on-site substitution of advertising content for the purposes of exhibiting art." There's some videos on the site of their
prototype software. I've got a similar idea I want to try with my G1.
video art design advertising aug augmented-reality 2009 May 29, 9:17"Anyway, the idea is to find techniques, be they arrays of bright infrared LEDs, or paints that shine well in infrared but are not obvious in visible light, and create invisible graffiti that only
shows up in tourist photos and videos."
humor graffiti ir ir-paint magic tourist photography 2009 May 29, 2:50
I like the idea of QR codes, encoding URLs and placing them
on real world objects, but the QR codes themselves are kind of ugly. To make them less obvious I thought I could spray QR codes on to an object with an infrared reflective paint and shine infrared
light on the QR codes, since most cameras, for instance the camera in my G1 phone, pick up infrared that our eyes do not.
In my search for infrared paint I've found a seller of IR ink (via programming forum) and an Infrared Paint Recipe (via IR FAQ).
In looking for this paint I've found that it comes up a lot in relation to the military for things like paint markers that are visible at
night with proper equipment, and paint that absorbs IR light to make vehicles less obvious to night vision goggles. Even though the first
reflects infrared light and the second absorbs it websites end up refering to both as infrared paint which made it difficult to search.
Additionally I found links to some other geeky infrared projects:
ir paint technical ir infrared qr qr code 2009 May 26, 11:28"But Data.gov is different. It is primarily for machines, not people, at least as a first step. It is a catalog of various sets of data from government agencies. And the idea is to offer the data in
one of several standardized formats, ranging from a simple text file that can be read by a spreadsheet program to the XML format widely used these days for the exchange of information between Web
services. Other data is presented in formats that are meant to feed into mapping programs."
data nytimes xml government 2009 May 13, 11:04To summarize: build the smart grid on top of the Internet, and put wireless mesh routers in power meters and cars.
david-weinberger network wifi mesh-networking wired article robin-chase car smart-grid 2009 May 12, 2:32If Hulu removes programming or Netflix doesn't make something available to watch instantly, its a safe bet it wasn't their idea to make their service worse. '"Whose retarded idea was that?" Well, not
Hulu's. The move was taken at the network's request. Powerful forces are working against free, legal online TV - and the decision to pull Sunny may have made that show the canary in the server farm.'
hulu business wired tv web internet 2009 May 3, 4:36Besides being an interesting presentation with real world examples off Web ideas applied to museums, the presentation itself (although its all icky flash) is lovely.
via:mattb museum flash presentation visualization 2009 Apr 23, 4:46Some lovely data visualizations. Is their Crimespotting visualization supposed to look like the map interface from GTA3SA? "Since 2001, Stamen has developed a reputation for beautiful and
technologically sophisticated projects in a diverse range of commercial and cultural settings."
blog web art visualization information interactive interface portfolio mashup 2009 Apr 21, 1:28Fallout 3's May 5th DLC removes old ending, adds new quests, new levels, new perks. Sounds good! "In a nutshell, Broken Steel will remove the game's ending entirely, with Bethesda's Pete Hines saying
simply to fans that called for an open-ended resolution, "We got the idea." Players will still have to make the final choice, but following that climax the game will continue, presenting new epilogue
quests, another 10 levels to gain, and new perks, monsters and achievements to keep the climb interesting."
game videogame news fallout3 fallout 2009 Apr 7, 11:58
This past week I finished Anathem and despite the intimidating physical size of the book (difficult to take and read on the bus) I became very engrossed and was able to finish it in several orders of
magnitude less time than
what I spent on the Baroque
Cycle. Whereas reading the Baroque Cycle you can imagine Neal Stephenson sifting through giant economic tomes (or at least that's where my mind went whenever the characters began to explain
macro-economics to one another), in Anathem you can see Neal Stephenson staying up late
pouring over philosophy of mathematics. When not
exploring philosophy, Anathem has an appropriate amount of humor, love interests, nuclear bombs, etc. as you might hope from reading Snow Crash or Diamond Age. I thoroughly enjoyed Anathem.
On the topic of made up words: I get made up words for made up things, but there's already a name for cell-phone in English: its "cell-phone". The narrator notes that the book has been translated
into English so I guess I'll blame the fictional translator. Anyway, I wasn't bothered by the made up words nearly as much as some folk. Its a good thing I'm long
out of college because I can easily imagine confusing the names of actual concepts and people with those from the book, like Hemn space for Hamming distance. Towards the beginning, the description
of slines and the post-post-apocalyptic setting reminded me briefly of Idiocracy.
Recently, I've been reading everything of Charles Stross that I can, including about a month ago, The Jennifer Morgue from the surprisingly awesome amalgamation genre of spy thriller and Lovecraft
horror. Its the second in a series set in a universe in which magic exists as a form of mathematics and follows Bob Howard programmer/hacker, cube dweller, and begrudging spy who works for a
government agency tasked to suppress this knowledge and protect the world from its use. For a taste, try a short story from the series that's freely available on Tor's website, Down on the Farm.
Coincidentally, both Anathem and the Bob Howard series take an interest in the world of Platonic ideals. In the case of Anathem (without spoiling anything) the universe of Platonic ideals, under a
different name of course, is debated by the characters to be either just a concept or an actual separate universe and later becomes the underpinning of major events in the book. In the Bob Howard
series, magic is applied mathematics that through particular proofs or computations awakens/disturbs/provokes unnamed horrors in the universe of Platonic ideals to produce some desired effect in
Bob's universe.
atrocity archives neal stephenson jennifer morgue plato bob howard anathem 2009 Apr 7, 9:02
I'm a big fan of the concept of registerProtocolHandler in HTML 5 and in FireFox 3, but not quite the implementation. From a high level, it allows web apps to register themselves as
handlers of an URL scheme so for (the canonical) example, GMail can register for the mailto URL scheme. I like the concept:
- Better integration of web apps with your system.
- Its easy for web apps to do.
- Links to URNs can now take the user to the sites the user prefers for the sort of thing identified by the URN. For example, if I have a physical address in HTML, instead of making that an http
link to Yahoo Maps, I can make the link a geo scheme URI and those who follow the link will get their preferred mapping site that
has registered for that scheme. Actually, looking at the geo scheme's RFC, maybe I'd rather use some other URN scheme to represent the physical location, but you get the point.
However, the way its currently spec'ed out I don't like the following:
- There's no way to know if you are the handler for a particular URL scheme which is an important question for web app URL protocol handler authors.
- There's no way to fallback to an http URL in the case that a particular URL scheme isn't registered. A suggested solution to testing the registration of a scheme is for browsers to provide an additional script method
to check if a scheme is registered. I don't like the idea of writing script that walks over all my page's links and rewrites them based on that method. I'd much rather see a declarative and
backwards compatible fallback mechanism, although I don't know what that would look like.
- There's no way to register for a namespace within the urn scheme URI, the info scheme URI, or the tag scheme URI. I want to register
info:lccn/... (Library of Congress Card Number identifiers) to LibraryThing or Amazon and I want to register urn:duri:... (dated URIs) to the Web Archive, among other things.
- Will this result in a proliferation of unregistered URL schemes with clashing namespaces? The ESW Wiki notes why this would be bad.
- And last, although this is nitpickier than the rest, I don't like the '%s' syntax used in the registration method. I'd much rather pass in an URL template, like the URL template used
in OpenSearch. If an URL template is used for matching rather than registering against a particular URL scheme, this could also allow for registering a namespace within a URN. For example
something along the lines of:
registerProtocolHandler("info:lccn/{lccnID}", "htttp://www.librarything.com/search_works.php?q={lccnID}", "LibraryThing LCCN")
url template registerprotocolhandler firefox technical url scheme protocol boring html5 uri urn 2009 Feb 27, 11:00Raymond Chen has a years worth of blog content written and scheduled! "To give you an idea of how far in advance I write my blog entries, I wrote this particular entry on February 13, 2008. ... this
particular entry ended up on February 27, 2009 because that was the next available open day. ... Now, with a buffer of over a year, I do have quite a bit of leeway in choosing when any particular
article is published." Humorous commentor John writes in response: "If you were to disappear off the face of the Earth, how long would it be before we knew?"
blog raymond-chen writing humor 2009 Feb 26, 11:52This is what I'd like in a newspaper: "1: Focus on original content, do not rewrite wire stories or press releases." and "2: Focus on hyper-local coverage, newspapers should "own" their regional beat
because they have the best contacts and the best understanding of local companies and issues."
via:sambrook newspaper advertising business journalism internet 2009 Jan 13, 2:56Turn your snowed-in home's front door into a natural fridge. Good idea, although here we didn't get nearly enough snow to make this convenient.
humor beer cold brr snow canada design fridge 2009 Jan 8, 5:49Gloves with the ends of the index finger and thumb missing for using phones and the like while keeping the rest of your hands warm. Good idea!
glove design shopping wishlist phone cellphone clothing gloves 2008 Dec 30, 1:19The other day I thought a creative commons photography scavenger hunt is such a good idea, that it must already exist. And of course it does.
scavenger-hunt cc creative-commons wikipedia photo photography stolen-thoughts 2008 Nov 16, 10:24Noah Sussman describes the 'via:' delicious tag with references including a bookmarklet to ensure the via: tags are added automatically. The bookmarklet would only be useful to me if it worked on the
'Save a new bookmark' page, but the history and references are interesting. Reminds me of my past idea for a project that shows who influences who in your Delicious network based on duplicate links
among friends with the influencer who saves it first.
via:ethan_t_hein delicious meta bookmarklet script whuffie noah-sussman 2008 Oct 29, 3:09Video showing some more interesting touch screen ideas from Microsoft Research. A touch sensitive sphere that can accomodate multiple users and a table which projects one image onto itself and
another image onto objects beyond itself: "But hold another piece of a translucent glass in the air above the table, and it catches a second ghostly image. This trick is in the tabletop glass, which
electronically flickers between translucent and transparent 60 times per second, faster than the eye can notice."
research microsoft video touchscreen table
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