Joakim Nygård Archive Linked About

Tectonic Plate Timelapse

17 Jul 2009 -

Remarkable animation showing how much the earth’s crust moves when viewed at a geological timescale. 650 million years in 80 seconds. From 400 millions years ago to 250 million years in the future.

Minimalism, Michael Mann and Miami Vice

16 Jul 2009 -

Khoi Vinh on Michael Mann:

Over the course of his career, Mann has produced a taut, stylistic and often brutally impersonal filmography that seems most interested in the concept of work. His movies are preoccupied with how men (almost always men) of extraordinary skills practice their craft — and the price they must pay for doing so.

A Robot in Tokyo

10 Jul 2009 -

Amazing!

Gundam

Privacy and Google's Chrome OS

9 Jul 2009 -

John Paczkowski on the privacy implications of Google’s upcoming operating system Chrome OS:

Lest we forget, Google is in the behavioral targeting business. Why would people ever use an OS developed by a company whose business is based on meticulously recording and analyzing their online behavior?

Improvements to the Incandescent Bulb

7 Jul 2009 -

Necessity is the mother of invention, this time from a two year old US law on energy efficiency to take effect in 2012. Described as “tough standards”, the law requires incandescent bulbs to be 30% more efficient that today’s (Wikipedia). In contrast, the EU has agreed to put a complete ban on incandescent bulbs by 2012.

“There’s a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly,” said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

I wouldn’t go so far as the author and call it the cutting edge (they are still way behind compact fluorescent lamps), but there are certainly improvements on the way and with an estimated 90% of all private light sources in the United States being incandescent that is definitely needed.

Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation.

Incredible closeup of an ant

2 Jul 2009 -

Magnified 400 times using a scanning electron microscope. Such a strange and alien creature.

Michael Jackson on Last.fm

1 Jul 2009 -

Amazing graph of Michael Jackson tracks played per hour:

scrobbles

Information Can’t Actually Want Anything

30 Jun 2009 -

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson’s new book Free:

Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each [YouTube] video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number.

So very true.

Walkman for a Week

30 Jun 2009 -

BBC asks 13-year old Scott Campbell to use a Walkman over his iPod for a week:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

The Cloud With No Name

4 Jun 2009 -

Remarkable images of a type of clouds with no meteorological name. Looks a bit like a wavy sea seen from benath.

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