Oakland Artist Does Big Things for Bay Area Art World
Spoiler alert: Karen Cusolito is an old and dear friend of mine. I had the privilege of working with her in the early and mid-2000’s as part of the Flaming Lotus Girls, a female-focused metal and fire sculpture group. A December 2012 Smithsonian Magazine interview with Ms. Cusolito is here, with many excellent photographs of […]
Why Social Media Is the Front Line of Disaster Response
An infographic from Hurricane Sandy, but equally relevant in the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado yesterday. By Zoe Fox from Mashable.com: Nearly one million people are affected by natural disasters each year. In the U.S. alone, some 400 people die from disasters that cost the economy $17.6 billion. Helping respond to these cataclysmic events, social […]
3D-printable food? NASA wants a taste
By Casey Johnston from ArsTechnica.com: Grant money goes to see if we can’t print perfect, nutritious food. Printing chocolate onto crackers. Not much, but it’s a start. SMRC. NASA has bestowed a $125,000 grant upon a research corporation to pursue the development of 3D-printable food, according to a report from Quartz. Anjan Contractor, who runs […]
Profound and hilarious poetry written by arranging book spines
From io9.com: The series Sorting Shark from the Sorted Books project. Pictured above: A Day at the Beach. C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001 Nina Katchadourian borrows the words she uses for her unusual poetry from the spines of books. She arranges those spines, book upon book, so that they form brief poems that […]
The invisible beauty of flowers – in pictures
From Guardian.co.uk: Graphic designer turned artist Susumu Nishinaga has used an electron microscope to delve deep into the fabric of petal, leaves and pollen. The Japanese artist then colours the scanning electron micrograph (SEM) images using a computer – to reveal the building blocks of life. Part of the stigma (pink) of an Easter cactus […]
Is Lagos Home to an African Tech Movement?
By Monty Munford from Mashable.com: The Lagos taxi driver roars across the biggest bridge in Africa at 110 mph. Buffeted by the night wind, it feels as if we’re riding a motorbike. I am with two South Africans and a guy from Silicon Valley. We’re all swilling from a bottle of so-called whisky, including the […]
Neon Swing and Bird Cage by Su-Mei Tse
From Colossal.com: Swing is a 2007 kinetic sculpture by Luxembourg musician, artist and photographer Su-Mei Tse. If you’re like me you can’t wait to jump on for a ride, however it would all be over before it started as the entire piece is essentially a rigid light made of white neon tubes and controlled by […]
Mythbuster Adam Savage: “Work hard and work smart.”
MythBuster and über-maker Adam Savage entered the San Mateo County Fairgrounds riding a steampunk submarine for Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 this morning, and then from his perch in the conning tower imparted his message to thousands of DIY fans assembled. Savage has been giving something of a keynote speech at Maker Faires since 2008, […]
“ok, glass”
The original Google Glass announcement left me stunned. I had never seen anything like it before. To me, it was one of the only product announcements that has come close to the unveiling of the iPhone in 2007. Just like back then, it was a moment so exciting that I couldn’t resist telling everyone I […]
It Goes to Eleven
Among the many great things about being with my husband for ELEVEN years is that I got to make him an anniversary card with this on it:
Street Artist Uses Graffiti to Converse with the Police
By Robert Quigley from GeekOSystem.com: Street artist mobstr. had the ensuing conversation with the local authorities using graffiti. Judging by all of their white-washings, they were not fans of any of the several shades of grey he proposed. [Full article]
Eye-Poppingly Gorgeous Underground Stations from Around The World
By Vincze Miklós from io9.com: Rådhuset, Stockholm, Sweden Rådhuset (Court House) station was opened in 1975 as a part of the Stockholm rapid transit system, one of the best examples of organic architecture. The history of rapid-transit began 150 years ago, with the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in London in 1863. In the next […]
Going Digital: The Fourth Triennial Exhibition at the International Center of Photography
By David Rosenberg from Slate.com: Shopkeeper Suparat Taddee, Chumchon Ruamjai Community, Bangkok, November 2011. Courtesy of Gideon Mendel. For their fourth triennial, titled “A Different Kind of Order” the International Center of Photography focused on the sweeping influence of digital photography on established and emerging artists. The exhibition, featuring 28 video artists and photographers from […]
Wooden Pinhole Cameras Make Old-School Techniques Cool Again
Digital cameras are great, but like most electronics, they likely won’t withstand the test of time in, say, a century from now. So Slovenian industrial designer and self-taught carpenter Elvis Halilović developed pinhole cameras that he and his brother make out of locally-harvested chestnut and maple wood. The ONDU Pinhole Cameras, as Halilović has branded […]
Map of Every Known Piece of Space Debris Orbiting Earth
From GeeksAreSexy.net: We are messy.
Smartphone Tracker Gives Doctors Remote Viewing Powers
By Tom Simonite from MIT Technology Review: View full report: Data science and personal information are converging to shape the Internet’s most powerful and surprising consumer products. Here’s the smartphone technology that alerts a doctor when patients are headed for trouble. Tracking you: The Ginger.io app tries to detect health changes by monitoring a person’s […]
3-D Printed Ear Made From Calf Cells and Nanoparticles ‘Hears’ Radio Frequencies
By Liat Clark from Wired.com: Nanotechnology engineers from Princeton have 3-D printed an ear from calf cells and silver nanoparticles that picks up radio signals at frequencies beyond human capacity. The creation is part of their greater plan to one day build spare parts for human cyborgs. Rather than simply adding electronics to an ear, the team decided […]
Stop Building Websites and Start Building Smart Sites
By Chuck Longanecker on Betterment: A blog for people who care about design: The mission of digital-telepathy is to make great design accessible to anyone by creating new standards that improve how people interact with and create digital design. From websites to mobile apps, TVs and beyond, we’re committed to making experiences that define the […]
Cheese Grater Business Card
By Rusty Blazenhoff from LaughingSquid.com: Brazilian specialty cheese store Bon Vivant wanted a clever way to introduce and reinforce their brand, so agency JWT Brazil came up with the Grater Card, a small cheese grater that doubles as a business card. It’s made of light metal, and has the size of a classic business card…A […]
Sensible jumps in responsive image file sizes
By Jason Grigsby from CloudFour.com: Last year, I wrote about the challenges of picking responsive images breakpoints and how I found it a nearly unsolvable problem. It has vexed me since. But I have a new idea on how we might be able to define responsive image breakpoints that is based on a performance budget. […]
It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class
By Illah Nourbakhsh from MIT Technology Review: How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment? In the book Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT’s Sloan School of Management present a chart showing U.S. productivity, GDP, employment, and income from 1953 to 2011. The chart looks as you would […]
Russian and/or Soviet propaganda & advert posters [1917-1991]
1,469 photos of posters from 1917 to 1991! [Full Flickr set]
20 Inspiring Typography Based Web Designs
From WebDesignFact.com: Typography is surely a very important element of web design. A website must have a good typographic that makes visitor to interpret its content. It’s becoming easier and easier, with better technologies, for designers to utilize great typography in their website designs. Few weeks ago, we have posted an article regarding vintage style […]
David Bowie himself Tweets to Chris Hadfield about his cover of “Space Oddity”
David Bowie Official @DavidBowieReal 12 May CHRIS HADFIELD SINGS SPACE ODDITY IN SPACE! “Hallo Spaceboy…” Commander Chris Hadfield, currently on… http://fb.me/24sZNW5ly Retweeted by David Bowie Official View media Chris Hadfield @Cmdr_Hadfield 12 May With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo …
The New York Times reports on Chris Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” video
Astronaut Covers ‘Space Oddity’ From Space By Robert Mackey The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has documented his five months in charge of the International Space Station in great detail in Twitter photographs and YouTube videos, celebrated his last day aboard the craft by releasing an elaborately produced cover version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” […]
David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” recorded on the International Space Station
This is so beautiful. I am bawling. By Lauren Davis from io9.com: Chris Hadfield sings “Space Oddity” in the first music video in space Tomorrow, Commander Chris Hadfield bids farewell to the International Space Station, meaning we won’t get our usual dose of his tweets and videos sent from space. But he’s signing off with […]
Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars
From SmithsonianMag.com: Image: Loring Loding Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the chemistry of dying stars. Seriously. Yonatan Zunger is a Google employee who decided to explain this phenomenon on Google+ recently. The simple answer to […]
Birds and Dinosaurs
From the awesome xkcd.com.
Students create promising products, trying to help solve world problems
By Valerie Vande Panne from HarvardScience/HarvardGazette.com: Imagine spraying the nape of your neck with a skinlike substance that keeps you cool as you jog in the August heat. Imagine generating electric power with every step you take. Imagine stopping along the way to pick a container of refreshing water from a tree. This is the […]
A Designer’s Internal Ruler
From the great 20px.com.
Remarkable Cave Houses, Including the Homes that Inspired Tolkien
By Vincze Miklós from io9.com: Forget putting up four walls and a roof; these homes use the stony walls of natural and human-made caves to shelter their inhabitants from the storm. Check out these incredible rocky homes, from ancient cave dwelling to modern house, to the buildings that may have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbiton. […]
Review: Pebble e-paper watch
From boingboing.net: 69k backers. $10m in the can. But now that the Pebble E-paper watch is showing up on our wrists, was it worth it? With 68,929 backers pledging more than $10m, the Pebble E-paper watch is the highest-grossing Kickstarter project to date. The pitch, to fund an Android- and iOS-compatible smartwatch, was so successful […]
Reframe
Unhappy Customers Want to Parachute From Adobe’s Creative Cloud
From Wired/Enterprise.com: Adobe’s move to the Creative Cloud isn’t sitting well with all of its customers. Over 5,000 of them have now signed a Change.org petition calling on the company to keep selling packaged software. The blowback started on Monday when Adobe said that it will no longer sell new versions of its Creative Suite […]
Memoto Camera Logs Your Life
From MIT Technology Review: [Video] Logging Life with a Lapel Camera A startup believes people will want a photographic record of their lives, taken at 30-second intervals. “We want to provide people with a perfect photographic memory,” says Martin Källström, CEO of Memoto. His startup is creating a tiny clip-on camera that takes a picture […]
What your Mac keyboard would look like if it was buried for a hundred years
After the excavation, everybody attending the 2113 meeting of the World Anthropology Association discussed what they’d found. It was a century-old midden pit, full of Apple devices from the days before the company had gotten into biological devices and cloning kits. Maico Akiba is an artist and illustrator in Japan who has created an entire […]
If Payphones Survive, Will They Look Like This?
From Mashable.com: When was the last time you used a phone booth to make a call? Odds are, not for several years at least. So are all of those city phone booths rendered useless, relics of a bygone era? Not necessarily — they might just need a bit of a makeover. Late last year, New […]
Images from a century of medical propaganda
Health, history, and design collide at the National Library of Medicine. The US National Library of Medicine is much more than a library about medicine. Founded in 1836, the Maryland-based NLM is home to the world’s largest collection of biomedical resources, including old books, videos, and scientific studies. It also houses a fascinating online collection […]
Productivity
From the great 20px.com site:
Astronauts articulate some of the life-changing feelings brought up by their experience of space
Apollo and Shuttle/International Space station astronauts, as well as philosophers, talk about the haunting “overview effect” of seeing the Earth from space.
What Adobe Creative Suite’s Move to the Cloud Actually Means for You
By Adam Dachis from LifeHacker.com: Adobe Photoshop, along with all other Creative Suite applications, just made a move to the cloud. Adobe decided to discontinue software you can actually buy so they can force you to rent the applications for a monthly fee. This change comes with a number of problems but also some advantages. […]
Digital copies of The Hydra, magazine of Craiglockhart, the Edinburgh hospital where WWI poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met
The Hydra was a journal written by patients at Craiglockhart, a World War I hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland. The hospital was for both officers and enlisted men suffering from “shell-shock” — what we’d now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder — with a variety of causes and symptoms. Patients included poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The institution […]
Cook. Charge. Go.: BioLite
By Rachel Martin from DesignEnvy/AIGA: An innovative business that converts waste heat into electricity—and integrates environment, people, economy and culture from The Living Principles for Design framework—is BioLite. BioLite, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, was founded by Jonathan Cedar and Alex Drummond and has received numerous awards for their innovative CampStove. What’s so great about […]
Is Adobe making a mistake by moving to a subscription-only model?
From Lifehacker.com: Adobe announced the end of their Creative Suite software, instead choosing to focus on their Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service. CS6 is the last version you can buy and download, and if you want access to tools like Photoshop and Illustrator in the future, you’ll need a subscription to get them. Adobe says […]
Late Arrivals, Goldfish, and Guinea Pigs: Unofficial Soldiers’ Clubs of WWII
From Slate.com‘s history blog, the Vault: During World War II, soldiers serving in Allied armies formed several exclusive clubs honoring troops who survived harrowing ordeals. Though unofficial, these clubs offered a morale boost to their members, as well as to other soldiers, as proof that survival—against all odds—was possible. The Caterpillar Club, which was first […]
Will Google Glass be a commercial failure because you look like an idiot using it?
By Matthew Yglesias from Slate.com: Marcus Wohlsen wrote what I think is a fairly persuasive piece arguing that Google Glass will be a commercial failure because you look like an idiot using it. My good friend Tom Lee calls Wohlsen’s piece “truly awful” and goes on to write a fairly persuasive piece about the importance […]
Gorgeous Concept Designs for Underwater Cities
While some pieces of conceptual architecture guide out imagine toward distant planets, others plunge us into the depths of the ocean. These underwater cities concepts, dreamed up by illustrators, architects, and designers, imagine the sorts of structures we might inhabit beneath the watery surfaces. Syph, Australia A collection of specialised organisms function as a whole, […]
Submit your name and a haiku poem to be sent into Mars orbit on the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) spacecraft
Who can submit a name and where will it go? Anybody on planet Earth is welcome to participate! However, to create a log-in you must be 18 or older. If you are under 18 and you would like to enter, please ask your parent or teacher for help. Your name will be written to a […]