2013 Jun 24, 1:00
Having worked on Windows 8 I'm not in a neutral position to review aspects of it, however I'll say from a high level I love taking the following various positives from smart phone apps and app
stores and applying it to the desktop:
- Independent developers can easily publish apps.
- One trusted place for a user to find apps.
- User can trust apps are limited to a declared set of capabilities.
- One common and easy way for users to buy and try apps.
- Easy mechanism for independent developers to collect revenue.
Relieving the independent developer of software development overhead, in this case Windows taking care of distribution and sales infrastructure is wonderful for me with my third party
developer hat on. This combined with my new found fun of developing in JavaScript and the new Windows Runtime APIs means I've been implementing and finishing various ideas I've had - some for fun
and some for productivity on my Surface. Development notes to follow.
store technical windows windows-store 2010 Apr 21, 1:47So... There's Downfall a 2004 film about the final days of Hitler's life. Then folks take the most dramatic scene and parody it with new subtitles having Hitler yell about various things like his
cell phone or Burning Man. It becomes a meme and meta Downfall parodies show up with Hitler yelling about the Downfall parodies. Now the studio producing the film has sent DMCA takedown notices to
Youtube and many of the videos are disappearing. In response is a new Downfall parody in which Hitler issues DMCA notices to Youtube...
censorship hitler humor copyright dmca eff legal youtube video fairuse meme web internet technical 2009 Dec 10, 3:44Some great stuff in here but it kills me how traditional media generally doesn't do hyperlinks in their articles.
nytimes ideas article 2009 Dec 9, 1:32"We're not always aware of it here in the USA, but there are many ISPs out there in the world who do things quite differently than what we're used to. Some of these ISPs ideas are even really good.
Ars surveys the global ISP landscape and paints a picture of what a dream ISP might look like."
technical internet isp web article 2009 Dec 8, 1:56More good gift ideas just in time for the holidays: "The Invision LD 3D-Modeler printer has been discontinued and is being sold off for $5,000 a throw -- it uses Laminated Object Manufacturing to
produce low-rez 3D models"
3d printer purchase gift wishlist 2009 Nov 20, 7:03Whiteboard paint. As in, turn a surface into a whiteboard by applying this paint.
product paint whiteboard wishlist 2009 Sep 1, 4:59"...toy and apparel designers Kid Robot (with the help of creative ideas studio We Are Plus) have organized a mobile phone-based scavenger hunt in Manhattan centered around scanning QR codes."
qrcode phone scavenger-hunt toy advertising 2009 Aug 12, 8:08"In a formal academic paper, every claim is referenced to another academic paper... This convention gives us an opportunity to study how ideas spread, and myths grow, because in theory you could
trace who references what, and how, to see an entire belief system evolve from the original data."
science meme research health medicine ben-goldacre network graph 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 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 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 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 2008 Oct 15, 2:53Stylish blog that looks like it has interesting cultural and business related articles and links (not just weird/humorous).
blog web advertising monthly design culture business 2008 Oct 15, 10:47The artist Harriet Russell encodes the destination postal address of her letters with anagrams, crosswords, and other puzzles: "Despite fears of a Royal Mail backlash, Russell found the system more
than willing to play her game. The crossword edition was returned completed with the comment "Solved by the Glasgow Mail Centre". Only 10 of the 130 letters posted lost their way through the system,
some held particularly testing anagrams, others were without a postal code."
humor puzzle crossword art mail postal-system harriet-russell book 2008 Jul 14, 4:37"Neal Stephenson delivered a talk entitled The Fork: Science Fiction versus Mundane Culture at Gresham College." Talk is sort of pop analysis of geeky entertainment. Lots of annecdotal evidence but
interesting ideas anyway.
geek history neal-stephenson scifi fiction literature culture video 2008 Jun 25, 2:50A few interesting interface ideas for a dual-display reading device.
video book interface ui 2008 May 9, 5:53W/o my middle name: Add ivy resin, Daisy driven. W/ my middle name: Envy is deadlier, Evil nerdy ideas
david-risney me anagram text 2008 Jan 22, 9:56
More ideas stolen from me in the same vein as my stolen OpenID thoughts.
Fast
Pedestrian Crossing on Four Way Stops. In college I didn't have a car and every weekend I had weekly poker with friends who lived nearby so I would end up waiting to cross from one corner of a
traffic lit four way stop to the opposite corner. Waiting there in the cold gave me plenty of time to consider the fastest method of getting to the opposite corner of a four-way stop. My plan was
to hit the pedestrian crossing button for both directions and travel on the first one available. This only seems like a bad choice if the pedestrian crossing signal travels clockwise or counter
clockwise around the four way stop. In those two cases its better to take the later of the two pedestrian signal crossings, but I have yet to see those two patterns on a real life traffic stop. I
decided recently to see if my plan was actually sound and looked up info on traffic signals. But the info
didn't say much other than "its complicated" and "it depends" (I'm paraphrasing). Then I found some guy's analysis of this problem. So I'm done with this and I'll continue pressing both
buttons and crossing on the first pedestrian signal. Incidentally on one such night when I was waiting to cross this intersection I heard a loud multi-click sound and realized that the woman in the
SUV waiting to cross the intersection next to me had just locked her doors. I guess my thinking-about-crossing-the-street face is intimidating.
Windows Searching
Windows Media Center Recorded TV's Closed Captions. An Ars-Technica article on
a fancy DVR described one of the DVRs features: full text search over the subtitles of the recorded TV shows. I thought implementing this for Windows Media Center recorded TV shows and Windows
Search would be an interesting project to learn about video files, and extending Windows Search. As it turns out though some guy, Stephen Toub implemented Windows Search over MCE closed captions already. Stephen Toub's article is very long and describes some
other very interesting related projects including 'summarizing video files' which you may want to read.
stolen-thoughts windows search mce windows traffic closed captions four-way-stop windows-media-center
Fast
Pedestrian Crossing on Four Way Stops. In college I didn't have a car and every weekend I had weekly poker with friends who lived nearby so I would end up waiting to cross from one corner of a
traffic lit four way stop to the opposite corner. Waiting there in the cold gave me plenty of time to consider the fastest method of getting to the opposite corner of a four-way stop. My plan was
to hit the pedestrian crossing button for both directions and travel on the first one available. This only seems like a bad choice if the pedestrian crossing signal travels clockwise or counter
clockwise around the four way stop. In those two cases its better to take the later of the two pedestrian signal crossings, but I have yet to see those two patterns on a real life traffic stop. I
decided recently to see if my plan was actually sound and looked up info on traffic signals. But the info
didn't say much other than "its complicated" and "it depends" (I'm paraphrasing). Then I found some guy's analysis of this problem. So I'm done with this and I'll continue pressing both
buttons and crossing on the first pedestrian signal. Incidentally on one such night when I was waiting to cross this intersection I heard a loud multi-click sound and realized that the woman in the
SUV waiting to cross the intersection next to me had just locked her doors. I guess my thinking-about-crossing-the-street face is intimidating.
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