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Wolfram Alpha Screencast

15 May 2009 -

Stephen Wolfram, who famously built Mathematica, demoes what appears to have potential to revolutionize the way we look for information online.

The information presented from a query in the demo is nothing short of amazing, providing remarkable relevant and interesting facts and graphs. The ability of the Wolfram Alpha engine to calculate the results rather than relying on static text and combining or comparing different entities makes for some very intriguing possibilities.

It will be very interesting to see where this is going.

Alone Across the Ice

7 May 2009 -

Todd Carmichael breaks the solo record for reaching the South Pole on foot. It’s a remarkable story

I have no water! That’s it. I have no water. If you don’t have water, you don’t have life.

Watch the amazing video documentary by Todd himself at the bottom of the story. Incredible determination!

Knowing what’s wrong is a prerequisite for fixing it

7 May 2009 -

John Siracusa on what magic is behind the RDF of Steve Jobs:

Though a good critic can influence the community of creators, in the end, he does not create anything himself. But take that critic and put him in charge of the creators. Make him, let’s say, the founder, CEO, and spiritual leader of several thousand of the most talented engineers and artists in the computer industry. What might happen then?

Oh, it’s just so…Microsofty

25 Apr 2009 -

Gordon Miller explains his first-run experience with a new Microsoft Surface, that does not respond to touch input when first turned on.

That’s the true cost of a poor approach to usability – it gets you a reputation that’s hard to shake.

Unbelievable!

The State of Computing

17 Apr 2009 -

A long but good post on why we are still stuck with the desktop metaphor for most user interfaces. The very problem I’ve addressed when talking about the problem with online data and views to your media files:

Every geek I know shares, to some degree, the notion that the “desktop” metaphor for computers is outdated. What nobody seems to have a solid opinion on is what would take its place.

Brent Simmons sums it up brilliantly:

I don’t know about you, but I know this issue is always in the back of my head. There’s a nagging feeling that we’re doing it wrong, that there are some leaps forward we’re missing, that we’re still stuck in 1984.

Designing Convertbot

3 Apr 2009 -

The new iPhone app Convertbot by Tapbots is just as beautifully designed as their first, Weightbot. The app feels so polished and at home in the iPhone GUI that it just begs for usage. It doesn’t really feel like an app, rather it becomes the device. This is exactly what it means to raise the bar.

Silicon Graphics Sold for $25 Million

2 Apr 2009 -

I first thought this to be an April Fools story, but the sgi press release confirms that they have indeed been sold to Rackable.

When I was a kid, Silicon Graphics was king of computer generated imagery (along with George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic), producing special effects for movies like Jurassic Park and Terminator. They even initiated the defacto standard for describing 3d models, the OpenGL standard.

Good stuff

Earth Hour Pictures

31 Mar 2009 -

It’s not imagery from the ISS but this picture series from The Boston Big Picture is a fantastic display of before and after. The Wikipedia entry on Light Pollution has some background on the scale and some of the consequences of using so much light, including two remarkable pictures from space (composites of satelite photos) of the earth at night in 2000 and 2007 - the increase is stunning.

The Makers of Things

27 Mar 2009 -

Rands:

We are defined by what we build. It’s not just the engineering ambition that designed these structures, nor the 20 people who died building the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s that we believe we can and decide to act.

OmniGraphSketcher

26 Mar 2009 -

New application by Omni Group that looks amazing. It is the kind of software that feels like a magic, digital version of pen and paper. A simple idea but it works remarkably well for creating illustrative graphs.

The Startup Myth

20 Mar 2009 -

From the SAMBA blog:

Get real. Entrepreneurship is about growth and value. Entrepreneurship is about creating something a sufficient number of people want or need. Entrepreneurship is about turning every dollar of resources spent into something worth more than a dollar. Entrepreneurship is about building a company and growing it beyond startup stage.

Forever's Not So Long

13 Mar 2009 -

Remarkable new short film by Shawn Morrison and Garrett Murray. Beautiful shots and great acting.

So amazing, so illegal. What are we going to do with you, future?

12 Mar 2009 -

Merlin Mann comments on Kutiman’s amazing Youtube video remixes

…this is what your new Elvis looks like, gang. And, eventually somebody will figure out (and publicly admit) that Kutiman, and any number of his peers on the “To-Sue” list, should be passed from Legal down to A&R.

The Future Is Already Here

5 Mar 2009 -

Great pictures, as always, of robots around the world (many are from Japan) from the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture section.

ToyRacers public beta

3 Mar 2009 -

My brother Stein Nygård just released a public beta of his upcoming toy themed racing game ToyRacers. He has previously developed NapkinRace and the renowned KartingRace. Though still in beta, the game looks impressive. (Windows only at this time)

Impressive Webapp Version of Interface Builder

26 Feb 2009 -

Though I am not convinced that converting every desktop app to a webapp in the cloud is such a clever idea, the work done by 280 North is impressive. This Atlas is the online equivalent of Interface Builder for developing GUIs on the Mac and appears very well done.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

20 Feb 2009 -

Excellent video by Jonathan Jarvis explaining the credit crisis and why it happened in clear terms.

Webgrind 1.0 Released

20 Feb 2009 -

The PHP Xdebug profiling tool I wrote with Jacob Oettinger has been bumped to version 1.0. There’s a new ability to click on function names in the call info list, very useful for backtracing expensive calls.

Strategies for tagging content

17 Feb 2009 -

Tagging has become the preferred way of organizing digital content through keywords. Sites like Flickr and Delicious have pushed the adoption. Michael Dominic K. offers some thoughts on how make tags useful when actually trying to find that item again.

There is a creational difference between tagging for content and tagging for context. In the first case (tagging for content) we’re applying the tag to name (describe) something already existing in the tagged object. Ie. a person, following the photo example I’ve given earlier. When tagging for context, we’re adding new information to the target.

3 “Opened” Projects

10 Feb 2009 -

Staying focused:

Dad has a simple method for keeping himself busy and entertained with what he’s working on. He simply starts 3 projects at the same time. He can work on whichever he pleases throughout the day, and go back and forth as his mood permits. If he becomes bored with a task or needs to think about how to do something, he switches tasks. By the end of the day he’ll have completed, (or nearly completed), 3 different projects. This is much better than only making halfway through a single project and getting distracted.

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