By way of Designrelated.com, here’s some really great work by illustrator Dmitry Maksimov. We’ve seen character designs like this many times before, but seeing them integrated into the landscapes the way Dmitry does is a really fresh take. 
Fresh Artwork from Dmitry Maksimov
September 16, 2008 – 12:57 pm
Google files patent for floating data centers
September 9, 2008 – 10:29 am
The New York times is reporting that Google has filed a patent for floating data centers, ostensibly in order to bring the centers closer to certain geographic areas where it is not reasonable or cost effective to build them on land. I don’t know about you, but that seems to be a pretty niche market if you ask me. Could it be there is another (possibly equally far-fetched) reason for wanting to do such a thing?
The first thing that sprung to my mind when reading this was the Principality of Sealand -what amounts to an oil-rig style platform situated in international waters which, some time ago declared that it was a sovereign nation. The upshot of this little move is that the data center housed on the ocean platform isn’t bound by the laws of any particular nation (Other than Sealand itself of course). It’s easy to extrapolate here and see how operating a datacenter in international waters could open up some autonomy for Google. Now, despite the apparent contradiction with the whole “don’t be evil” bit, I’m sure there are a number of legalities that make this a stretch. On the other hand, there are cases where that autonomy could be a very good thing. The fact is that large companies routinely patent pie-in-the-sky solutions and rarely actually cash in on them but one way or the other, it’s an interesting idea.
Techcrunch 50 - rich media vs meatspace.
September 8, 2008 – 8:23 pm
I won’t say much about this here since it’s covered in detail elsewhere, but for those of you who haven’t heard, a lot of new startups are demo-ing today at Techcrunch 50. The social media stream has really come together on this one, with a ton of great coverage online. Check out the livestream here and scoot on over to here to see Tweets about the conference.
You can also head over to Seesmic to find a ton of video reports right from the floor. Seesmics’ involvement in this has been really great. With all the options out there to get info, it’s almost worth asking yourself at what point does the coverage online become so rich and so varied that you would risk losing out on information by actually being there on the floor? It’s a bit analogous to watching auto racing on TV versus in person -sure, you are going to get that visceral smoke-in-your-eyes-seat-shaking good time if you pony up for 200 dollar tickets and sit in the stands, but you’ll also see about 25% of the race from that vantage point compared to the television coverage.
One wonders at what point following an event like this online instead of in-person is not only an acceptable alternative, but an actual advantage when it comes to being able to synthesize the most data efficiently. I’ll attempt to explore this conundrum more in depth in a later post.
And..We are back
September 7, 2008 – 11:54 pm
It’s been good while since I’ve been able to update, what with some issues I’ve been having with my server. Luckily things are ironed out now and I’m planning on digging back in and posting on a semi-regular basis once again.
BMW’s GINA Concept Car
June 16, 2008 – 2:48 pm
I usually try not to re-post things that have already been covered widely, but this is just too cool not to show off. BMW’s recently unveiled concept car the GINA Light Visionary Model is designed with stretched fabric in place of the traditional metal skin. This allows the shape of the vehicle to be shifted by moving the metal sub-structure on which the fabric rests.
The central pillar on the windscreen is an interesting choice, and lends a nautical feel to the shape of the windshield which is the only thing that doesn’t really work for me about this design.
At first blush, there would appear to be several problems to overcome with this technique including long-term durability, and perhaps more importantly keeping the fabric rigid enough to counteract deformation and harmonic vibration caused by wind when at speed. Nevertheless, concept cars are meant to inspire, and this one certainly does. If nothing else, one would hope that we see this concept co-opted by some art designers in Hollywood for vehicles in an upcoming scifi film. More info on the car here.
Twistori tracks Apple keynote
June 9, 2008 – 11:15 am
For when live blogging just isn’t fast enough, Twistori is offering up real–time twitter 
tracking for several key terms related to the Apple keynote address taking place later today. Real time goodness, all wrapped in a very attractive auto-updating interface. What’s not to love? Check it out here.
Since this is a Twitter-dependent service, any bet on how long it stays up during the keynote address?
Eye Exam for Design Geeks
June 3, 2008 – 11:02 am
BlueArt Studio has a truly awesome piece of design-centric art availbie in the form of this eye exam poster featuring not letters, by the silhouettes of famous chair designs. How many can you identify?
Overcoming Creative Roadblock
May 28, 2008 – 12:48 pm
Jeremy Horn has an excellent post on his blog today about interface design and how to break the mold and look at things from a new and creative perspective. His suggestions have bearing in many creative fields and not just interface and web design. Check it out here. Well worth a read, thank you Jeremy!
TED talks: Robert Ballard
May 27, 2008 – 5:15 pm
The Technology, Entertainment, Design conference has a wealth of great talks on it’s website, and I hope to highlight some of the most fascinating of them in the coming months (though really, most all of them are mind-bendingly interesting).
The talks are short, sweet and extremely educational. My first pick is this talk by Robert Ballard. Yes, this is the guy who found the Titanic after making a deal with the US Navy to first look for a couple cold-war era subs that had sunk. Among the tasty nuggets of information he tosses out almost as throw aways: roughly half of the US territory is underwater and we have better maps of Mars than we do of the ocean.
Seesmic: a New Kind of conversation
May 22, 2008 – 1:50 am
Over the last few days I have been checking out Seesmic, a new asynchronous video chat utility. At first, I was extremely skeptical about it or it’s usefulness, after all, video chat has been around for a long time and I’ve somehow managed fine without it. (In fact, I avoid it with a passion) The thing is, Seesmic is different. It has potential to be a really powerful form of interactive media.
When Twitter came out, many people where skeptical: after all, how could applying an arbitrary character limit to the messages possibly be a good or useful thing? Turns our it was both good and highly useful. The short messages force you to be brief. Twitter becomes in effect a self-distilled version of your sprawling lifestream. Seemsic has taken a similar tack with it’s service. Rather than allow you to talk one-to-one with another user with full duplex realtime video chat, Seesmic is a asynchronous. You post a short video message and other people can reply with there own. Often, these conversations evolve into longer threads. What makes this so great is the fact that anybody can go back and find out what they missed and jump into the conversation. The threaded approach also handily avoids the sort of anarchy that could occur had Seesmic gone the route of having a video chatroom of sorts with everybody able to talk at once. The process is very self-moderating, and in some regards feels like a better way to have a conversation with a bunch of people than even face to face. Interruption can’t happen, and if you miss a point or a comment someone made, you can go right back and listen again.
In a normal conversation there is always pressure to say something when the other person finishes. With Seesmic, that pressure is not there. If you want to reply, you can take as long as you would like think about what you want to say.
At the same time, having the face-to-face interaction seems to bring out the civility in people. -It removes the anonymity that turns so many people into jerks online.
I can honestly say that watching a video made by a newcomer from South America was the first time I’ve felt the internet truly making me more connected to the rest of humanity in any meaningful way. Seesmic is the first time I’ve felt the internet actually deliver on the emotional claim that it can bring people together and make them feel a greater sense of humanity. The intellectual claims made about the internet have all mostly come true, free access to information, increased connectivity to the word, but from my human and highly biased perspective, Seesmic creates an environment where I no longer have to remind myself that on the other side of my screen, connected by miles of internet backbone, there are other human beings looking back at me.
The Future
Seesmic has gotten me thinking about where a service like this could go in the future, and I believe it has really great potential.
Here are some possibilities:
-Collaborative Art
I’d love to see a group of talented people create characters and act out a free form storyline with each other on Seesmic or a service like it. One person starts, and then somebody jumps in in reply. It would be fascinating to see the story and characters evolve.
-Speech-to-text
The one downside to Seesmic is that when you are catching up on a long thread, you don’t need the nuances of full video, you just want to get a recap of the basic thoughts-text to speech would be great for that.
-Savable or Bookmarkable Threads
There are some segments of conversation on Seesmic that are downright profound, entertaining and funny. As the service grows, having a way to save and share those thread sections in a personal ‘best of’ tab would be phenomenal.
I’d love to hear you thoughts on Seesmic: where do you think it may be going in the future? Do you see it as a useful service?
