You know something is up when Google’s graphic of the day is made of LEGO blocks – it is the 50th anniversary of the LEGO block. Gizmodo has a nice LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities. They explain that Google founders Page and Brin used LEGO blocks to build an expandable disk storage casing for their prototype search engine in 1996.
MLAde 2007 is a spoof of the 2007 Chicago convention of the MLA. Find out why it wasn’t scheduled in Newfoundland.
Hussein Chalayan is a designer who is creating crystal and laser dresses that are extraordinary to watch. The Swarovski site has short videos of Hussein explaining how they make the outfits and then video of them shown. It is another take on smart fabrics.
Thanks to Jennifer for this.
TiltViewer is a fascinating way to look at Flickr pictures. It is by the same guy who created Simpleviewer – a Flash image viewer. I read about this on Shawn’s Randomosity blog.
boinboing has a short entry about a German robot that is exhibited writing out the bible. The robot is a RobotLab project (site in German.) The image comes from Marc Wathieu’s Flikr set for the RobotLab where the description of the project reads:
The Kuka robot is silently writing a version of the martin luther bible, which was originally printed in a early font called “Schwabacher”, retranslated here by RobotLab into calligraphy. “Wolfgang von Kempelen, Mensch-[in der]-Maschine” exhibition, ZKM, Karlsruhe (D).
From the lab site it seems they have also programmed it to draw portraits.
Thanks to Lynn for this.
Typography Kicks Ass: Flickr Bold Italic is a Flash toy that displays messages left by people using letters from Flickr. It is a “letters in the wild” toy that uses the images of letters of others. I wonder what a similar toy using the Dictionary of Words in the Wild could do?
Zonbu is a environmental personal computer with some interesting features. It runs a version of Linux and comes with bundled applications. You buy it with a monthly plan that gives you off-site storage and maintenance. It has no hard-drive, just a flash card for local storage. All of this means it is extremely energy efficient (consumes as much as a light bulb) and that it is easy to run. They also promise to take it back and disassemble it for recycling.As interesting as the green aspect of Zonbu is, I’m also struck by their service model. You buy it for $99 (without keyboard or monitor) and then pay $13 a month or more for the storage and support. You don’t get root access and they manage the computer for you. It comes with all the basic applications. As some commentators have put it – the Zonbu makes for a good second home computer for the family (at least those who don’t want to run PC games.)
Guy sent me this after reading my Blog Action Day grumbling.
I was asking myself how if I could use a PDA or iPod for presentations instead of a laptop and came across some articles like HOW-TO: Put PowerPoint on your iPod Photo from Engadget. The idea is that you export your presentation as a series of photos which can then be played out as video to a monitor or video project. (Note that they don’t go out as data.)
I was wondering about this reading about the now discontinued Margi Presenter-To-Go that works with the Palm line. They provide cables and stuff so you can run a data projector from a Palm PDA with enough memory. Alas they have given up on this. Will an iPod Touch version come along?
In the category of cool technology for your iPod has to be the Griffin Technology: iKaraoke. This microphone and iPod connector can be used to sing along to your favorite tunes. It apparantly “isolates the lead vocal track, then fades it, giving your voice room to make that favorite tune yours.”
Even better, they have software, the TunePrompter, that you can download and use to create a video with the lyrics syncronized to the tune. The free (and beta) software then creates a video for uploading to the iPod to work with the iKaraoke.
Very neat, even if I hate karaoke.
