Video: Free-Moving Kinect Used To Map Room And Objects In Detailed 3D | TechCrunch

Video: Free-Moving Kinect Used To Map Room And Objects In Detailed 3D | TechCrunch: "We’ve seen hacks for the Kinect from the very start, and even some that suggested one like this might be possible: a Kinect being moved around like a camera, recording the depth of everything it sees and building up a full-3D map of the room and every object in it. They call it KinectFusion, and it’s really quite fascinating to watch. I’ve re-hosted the video here, since the original is a bit cramped and not everyone wants to download the whole thing."

MemoryMiner: Digital Storytelling for Macintosh & The Web

MemoryMiner: Digital Storytelling for Macintosh & The Web: "MemoryMiner is the award-winning Digital Storytelling application used to discover the threads connecting peoples' lives across time and place. It lets you zero in on the stories depicted in your photos by linking them to each other based on people, places and time."

Looxcie Camcorder: Capture Unexpected Moments

Looxcie Camcorder: Capture Unexpected Moments: "Announcing the Looxcie 2: 20% lighter & twice the storage capacity"

The Google project: real life sharing, rethought for the web.

The Google project: real life sharing, rethought for the web.

Stanford's video processing in the cloud allows interactive streaming of online lectures

Stanford's video processing in the cloud allows interactive streaming of online lectures: "Stanford's video processing in the cloud allows interactive streaming of online lectures Stanford researchers designed software that allows a viewer to zoom and pan while streaming online courses. They recently released the code to the public."

29 Ways To Stay Creative

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo.

Lytro’s Camera Lets You Shoot First and Focus Later - NYTimes.com

Lytro’s Camera Lets You Shoot First and Focus Later - NYTimes.com

DeepShot - Migrating tasks across devices using mobile phone cameras

Mondo Window

Every seat is a window seat.

Kevin Slavin: Algorithms That Govern Our Luves

MSR Demos

Atrix 4G: Faux Laptop With a Phone For Brains

Atrix 4G: Faux Laptop With a Phone For Brains: "

Today’s best smartphones are really hand-held computers. They run a vast variety of applications, from productivity programs to games, that mimic what laptops do. Their biggest limitations for serious work, gaming, Web surfing and multimedia are their small screens, cramped keyboards and tinny speakers.

[ See post to watch video ]

So, what if you could use the brains and connectivity of such a hand-held computer to drive a laptop-size screen, keyboard and speakers, thus overcoming these limitations? Well, Motorola Mobility has devised a new phone and accessory that aim to do just that: to make the phone the only computer you need.

I’ve been testing this new phone, the Atrix 4G, an Android device that will cost $200 with a two-year contract and will run on AT&T’s network. It’s slated to be available by March 6. I’ve also been testing its unusual and clever accessory called the laptop dock, which looks like a large netbook, with an 11.6-inch screen, full keyboard, touch pad, and stereo speakers. This dock, the price of which depends on when you buy it, has no processor, no file storage and no connectivity of its own. It’s dormant until you plug the Atrix into a slot behind the screen.

When you dock the phone, the faux laptop comes alive. It duplicates the phone’s screen on its larger display and lets you use its connectivity and apps. It also contains a battery that charges the phone. The image of the phone’s screen, and any of its apps you run, can be actual size or blown up to use the dock’s larger screen.

With Motorola’s Atrix 4G smartphone, the laptop is the accessory. The phone shown docked to the laptop dock.

Full-Screen Firefox

Even more interestingly, the dock gives you access to a full, and full-screen, PC version of the Firefox Web browser. Firefox is tucked away inside the Atrix but is available only when the phone is plugged into the laptop dock or a second, smaller dock that’s meant to connect to a TV or desktop monitor. The smaller dock lacks a built-in keyboard, battery or screen.

The laptop dock costs $500, but AT&T will knock the price down to $300, after rebates, if you buy it at the same time you buy the phone. That brings the combined price of both devices to $500—the same as the separate price for the dock. The smaller dock, called the multimedia dock, costs $190.

In my tests, the Atrix and the laptop dock performed mostly as advertised. The phone had no trouble driving the larger screen or the full Firefox browser.

I was even able to insert a flash drive into one of the dock’s two USB ports and copy songs, photos, videos and documents into the phone’s internal memory using the keyboard and touch pad. I edited and wrote text in an app called Quickoffice on the phone using the laptop dock’s keyboard, and ran various other apps, including the popular game Angry Birds, on the larger screen.

The Firefox browser worked as normal, using either the phone’s cellular or Wi-Fi connections to access the Internet. And both the phone itself and Firefox can run Flash videos, which mostly played fine.

But the combination of the phone and dock wasn’t as fast, smooth or versatile as having a real laptop, even though to use them you’re essentially carrying around a light laptop (the dock weighs 2.4 pounds). Many apps on the phone aren’t as polished or powerful as typical PC apps, and I found them clumsier to use with the keyboard and touch pad, as opposed to the touch screen for which they were designed.

Installation Issue

Also, other than Firefox, you can’t install PC programs. You can use Web apps inside Firefox, such as Google Docs or the stripped-down Web versions of Microsoft’s Office apps. For email, you can either use the program based in the phone or any Web-based program via the Firefox browser, such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail. But you can’t, say, install iTunes, or PC-based games, or the full versions of Outlook or Microsoft Word.

And there is only a primitive file system, limited to the capacity of the phone, which is just 16 gigabytes, with an option to expand to 48 gigabytes.

The dock’s screen required a lot of scrolling when using Firefox, partly because the browser has a lot of menus and toolbars. To address this, Motorola lets you convert Web pages to versions with the Firefox controls stripped out, so you just see the content.

There’s another problem with the laptop dock. When you make or receive a voice call while the phone is docked, you must rely on the phone’s microphone and speakers, hidden behind the screen of the dock. As a result, calls sounded muffled on both ends, even though the phone automatically switches into speakerphone mode. Motorola says it is working on this issue.

Despite the drawbacks, some folks will surely be attracted to this innovative combination.

If you mostly do your computing tasks on a phone or a PC Web browser, storing files in the cloud and using phone or Web-based apps, Motorola has you covered. And the fact that the dock can charge the phone is a big plus.

Motorola’s Atrix 4G

The Phone Side

What about the phone itself?

Well, it’s one of the nicest smartphones I’ve tested. Its processor makes it fast, and it has a 4-inch, high-resolution screen—almost as high as the iPhone 4′s, though not quite as sharp to my eye. It runs an older version of Android, but Motorola is promising an upgrade.

The phone also has good battery life. It lasted a full day while I was testing it and Motorola claims up to nine hours of talk time. Photos and videos I took with the phone were sharp, and it has a front camera for video calls.

The Atrix also has two other notable features. First, it can take advantage of AT&T’s souped-up 3G network, which the carrier calls 4G because it can supposedly achieve 4G data speeds.

In my tests, in the D.C. and New York areas, the speed wasn’t especially impressive, averaging just a bit better than 3G speeds on other AT&T phones I’d tested.

There is also a fingerprint sensor built into the phone, which you can use instead of a pass code to secure the phone. It worked fine for me.

Overall, this is a very nice Android phone that can imitate a limited version of a laptop. That may be enough for some folks, but fall short for others.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

"

NoteSlate

NoteSlate: "

New digital sketchbook coming in June 2011…

NoteSlate is low cost tablet device with true one colour display, real paper look design, long life battery (180h !), together with very handy usage and very simple and helpful interface for pen and paper. This easy, compact and portable gadget is used anywhere you want to make any notes, drafts, sketches, any ideas for future reference. Paper for everyone! Write a note and check it later, save it, or delete it. Maybe send it after. Just one colour is enough to express the basics. Keep your life simple. You will love it. For $99.

via NoteSlate /// intuitively simple monochrome paper alike tablet device.

"

NoteSlate

NoteSlate: "

New digital sketchbook coming in June 2011…

NoteSlate is low cost tablet device with true one colour display, real paper look design, long life battery (180h !), together with very handy usage and very simple and helpful interface for pen and paper. This easy, compact and portable gadget is used anywhere you want to make any notes, drafts, sketches, any ideas for future reference. Paper for everyone! Write a note and check it later, save it, or delete it. Maybe send it after. Just one colour is enough to express the basics. Keep your life simple. You will love it. For $99.

via NoteSlate /// intuitively simple monochrome paper alike tablet device.

"

Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data

Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data

Edward Segel and Jeffrey Heer

Abstract—Data visualization is regularly promoted for its ability to reveal stories within data, yet these “data stories” differ in important ways from traditional forms of storytelling. Storytellers, especially online journalists, have increasingly been integrating visualizations into their narratives, in some cases allowing the visualization to function in place of a written story. In this paper, we systematically review the design space of this emerging class of visualizations. Drawing on case studies from news media to visualization research, we identify distinct genres of narrative visualization. We characterize these design differences, together with interactivity and messaging, in terms of the balance between the narrative flow intended by the author (imposed by graphical elements and the interface) and story discovery on the part of the reader (often through interactive exploration). Our framework suggests design strategies for narrative visualization, including promising under-explored approaches to journalistic storytelling and educational media.

Journalism in the Age of Data: Visualization as a Storytelling Medium

Journalism in the Age of Data: Visualization as a Storytelling Medium



Journalism in the Age of Data from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

"The Age of Fire" The Future?

L'età del fuoco - The age of fire from mauro calvone on Vimeo.

Activity Design Contest

Activity Design Contest: "The ubiquitous computing research group at the University of Toronto is conducting an application design contest as part of doctoral research. We have developed a Web-accessible Activity Service that can tell you: potential activities (e.g., drink coffee, ride bike, appreciate art) a person can perform in an environment specific places where a person can potentially perform an activity We want to find out what type of applications YOU would develop with the Activity Service! You do not have to build an application; just tell us about your novel and interesting design! The winning submission will receive $1000 USD; and up to two runners-up will receive $500 USD each. Please see rules and judging criteria for more details. Your design may be developed by our research team--or we could help you build it--to validate that the Activity Service can support its development. You retain the intellectual property of the design you submit; we will not commercialize your submission."

projects :: hijack

 hijack: "HiJack is a hardware/software platform for creating cubic-inch sensor peripherals for the mobile phone. HiJack devices harvest power and use bandwidth from the mobile phone's headset interface. The HiJack platform enables a new class of small and cheap phone-centric sensor peripherals that support plug-and-play operation."

Hans Rosling: The Joy of Stats

My Blackberry is Not Working

Edge: THE SECOND COMING — A MANIFESTO By David Gelernter

Edge: THE SECOND COMING — A MANIFESTO By David Gelernter: "THE SECOND COMING — A MANIFESTO By David Gelernter"


Everything is up for grabs. Everything will change. There is a magnificent sweep of intellectual landscape right in front of us.

MSP-EXP430G2 - MSP430 LaunchPad Value Line Development kit

MSP-EXP430G2 - MSP430 LaunchPad Value Line Development kit: "LaunchPad is an easy-to-use development tool intended for beginners and experienced users alike for creating microcontroller-based applications. At $4.30, the LaunchPad offers everything you need to get started with your projects. The LaunchPad development tool is a part of the MSP430 Value Line series. The integrated DIP target socket allows all 14 and 20-pin MSP430 Value Line devices to be dropped into the LaunchPad board for easy programming, debugging, and monitoring. Included are free unrestricted and downloadable software development environments for writing and debugging software. The LaunchPad can be used to create interactive solutions thanks to its integrated buttons, LEDs, and extra input/output pins for easy integration of external devices."

The Open Kinect project – THE OK PRIZE – get $2,000 bounty for Kinect for Xbox 360 open source drivers (now $2k)

The Open Kinect project – THE OK PRIZE – get $2,000 bounty for Kinect for Xbox 360 open source drivers (now $2k)"

Augmented (hyper)Reality

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Land of Lisp: http://landoflisp.com/

HTML5Rocks - The Basics of Web Workers

HTML5Rocks - The Basics of Web Workers: "Introducing Web Workers: Bring Threading to JavaScript"

Super Microphone Can Listen To Any Conversation On the Court

Super Microphone Can Listen To Any Conversation On the Court:

World Famous Design Junkies � wfdj_popchartlab_thegrandtaxonomyofrapnames

World Famous Design Junkies � wfdj_popchartlab_thegrandtaxonomyofrapnames