ReadItLater transformed the way I waste time online. I’ll rephrase that: it let me be more productive with my unproductively. Let me explain: Unfortunately I live in the real world (with a real job/boss) and this means that if I spot a 1hr long video on BoingBoing (about creative commons banana mash-ups being beaten by the police, or whatever) during my lunch, then I can’t sit there watching it all afternoon. Nor do I want to be mucking about e-mailing home urls to myself. What I really needed was a icon in Firefox I can click, that will save a page for later when I get home… or when I have more time to spend on such frivolities. That little icon was provided by ReadItLater. All it does it synchronize a bunch of ‘I’ll get round to this later’ links which you can save choose to visit later, when you have time. This plug-in has expanded onto the iPhone and a dozen other platforms. You can even view your list online, which I find handy when I have a moment to waste alone with just my S60 Nokia for company.
It’s simple, but very handy and the author has just released version 2.0 which brings some visual refinements that mean it’s all very polished. I love the new icons. Find out more at ReadItLater.
There have been many art projects projecting stuff on the side of buildings. Often these can be quite impressive because of the unusually huge scale of the imagery, but once that novelty has faded they can be a bit naff. Not this though.
This really is like a great big living cartoon. I’d love to see this ‘in the flesh’.
Graphic artist Mark Weavers’ flickr stream is heavily dosed with win. Some of this work I think may be influenced by the Footfall series of science fiction books. Regardless, it’s great work.
…and for those wanting to cancel their cable/sky packages. Here’s why:
I’ve been a member of the Boxee Alpha test for a while now and it showed a huge amount of potential. Boxee is, at its most simple, a media player that draws content from the net (Division3, iPlayer, Blip.tv etc.) and from your local network (ripped DVDs, your music library, downloaded tv shows). This content is then presented in a wonderful ‘made for big screen’ (read: your tv, not your 15″ laptop monitor) easily navigable interface. A rather gorgeous interface too, I might add. Well, certainly in the Alpha, I’m a little unsettled by the new beta interface but it is well ahead of the rigidness of the AppleTV and the ugly mess of any recent Microsoft efforts. Boxee is based on XBMC, a brilliant Open-source media player with a similar, but not as ambitious, desire to take over your tv. Boxee adds web-content to XBMC’s marvelous local network media management. I’ve been running XBMC on a hand-me-down 1st-gen XBox (thanks Ed!) for a couple of years now and it kicks the ass of Windows Media Centre and the like. It just works. No codec bullshit, no delay, no fiddling.
The Boxee box
This alpha potential has been realized in the form of the newly announced beta and the Boxee Box. Although Boxee is quite intuitive to use, it can be a total bugger to setup, as was XBMC before it. Your options are hack your Apple TV or build a Linux machine and dive into a bundle of .debs and Pulse audio problems. Oh, and good luck on 64-bit Ubuntu, it’s a bloody nightmare! The Boxee Box removes all these headaches and essentially makes Boxee suitable for non-geeks. It’s built by DLink, who in my experience seem to churn out reasonable rooters/modems, and we’re promised it’ll cost a quite reasonable $200. This investment will open up a world of couch-accessible online content. There is a growing amount of independent media available online and bringing it from tiny laptop screens and onto that new 37″ monster you have in your living room could be the shot in the arm that many indie shows need.
I was going to blog about how stupid the case design was. “Don’t they understand that people are still going to have audio equipment/a DVD recorder/etc under their TV?”, I prepared myself to rant, “don’t they realize that such a bizarre shape will make it impossible to stack and fit under televisions?”. But as further details have emerged, it seems that the Box is so small that none of this should be a concern and as the remote control is RF then you could even hide it behind your flat-screen if you want.
This thing is seriously small
The closest thing we’ve seen to this has been the Apple TV, which like Boxee could view web content. But being Apple, you were tied into the Apple iTunes marketplace, and thinking. No thanks, Jobs, no DRM crap for me. The Boxee Box’s design, cost and potential have lead to a very desirable little product and it is a testament to the Open-source projects that have gone before it. Put me down for one.
Named after British and American soldier who died in Helman province, Afghanistan, this weird halo-like effect has been spotted around the rotor-blades of military helicopters. It is a result of static electricity that occurs when the CH-47s fly though dust storms.
The Eisenhower interstate roads were built so that, in the event of invasion, America’s armies could quickly move to the part of the union that was under attack. This diagram in the style of the famous H.C. Beck London Underground diagram (shout out to BoingBoing) helps you see what cities these roads pulled together.
This is NSFW due to lots of things going in and out of peoples bottoms. It is however awesome pixel-work which takes us back to the era of SNES and Sega Genesis. Pretty much the most controversial comment on truckers since that Jeremy Clarkson ‘joke’. The clever people on reddit remind me of Paul Robertson, the twisted genius who did Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight.
Via pretty much about everyone on my twitter stream.
Flickr have created a set that commemorates the fall of the Berlin wall. What’s great about this is that whenever we pick up a paper we see the same pictures and video: The Brandenburg gate, that guy with the hammer… etc. You know what i mean? Sometimes you need to step back from the same old cliched images and get more of a sense of the scale of the thing and the effect it had on the architecture around it. This set has regular folk who visited in the dark old days to show off their photos which often show the city, not just the wall, and from the angles you tend not to see on tv.
The crazy costumes, dry delivery and pure sexual energy of Lady Ga Ga, Christopher Walken and Cartman respectively (at least I think that’s the right order) combine to make this the ultimate plodding-beat pop-mashup:
There were already plenty of reasons to get an Android device. Now there is another reason. A big reason. There has been an official announcement regarding the release of Google Maps Navigation. This provides turn by turn navigation, traffic data and voice commands, basically all the stuff you’d expect of a high-end in-car GPS system. It irradiates the major downside of using Google Maps previously on mobile devices: it caches map data of the route you’re going to take. The big advantages are: It’s free. It utilities Street View, which is potentially very helpful and a service that no one else can realistically provide. Using Google Maps means it knows what ‘Maps knows. That is; everything. Local businesses, attractions and landmarks should all be easier to locate. It also has voice commands, which is something Google has done very well before and likewise, I think their UI is usually on pretty good form.
It’s only going to be available in the US initially, but the same goes for many of these big ‘Map-based projects.
This is one in the eye for Apple and friends, whose app store is currently full of £40+ turn-by-turn navigation apps. It’s bad news for GPS system makers as well, who rely on their proprietary software to shift their hardware. If you are particularly cruel, you can watch the stock of Garmin and Tom Tom fall on Google Finance or head to Engadget for further (typically excitable) coverage and videos.
Regular readers may remember Notorious Hitler – Where Brooklyn at. We’ve had a bit too much right-wing attention round here if you ask me, what with Mr. Griffin on Question Time and the personal realization that Maggy Thatcher has started to look a little bit like my Nan. So here is something a little more cheerful.
RZA shows off his geeky side in this interview. Jedi mind tricks (not the band), ColecoVision and the usual comic books that anyone who knows about the Wu will be familiar with. It’s nice to hear stuff like:
We probably all have them, maybe in that piece of plastic we wave at the ticket machine as we get on the bus or tube. RFID is becoming more pervasive. This video shows how Berg London managed to let us see the previously invisible fields and what shape they take.
...to devolute.net. This is the webpage of Ian Parr; a UK based web designer.
About me
I enjoy the ramblings of MES, the color blue and people who move their hands around too much when they talk. I read the Guardian, go to gigs and play music on my record player. My interests include design and the comedy of Armando Iannucci.
Visit the about page to find more about me and this page or the work section to view a growing portfolio.
