Game, game, and again game

Weird hybrid of abstract poetry and game. Has to be played to be believed.
Link here

We've seen a lot of these types of interfaces being demoed about the place lately, looks like Microsoft liked the demos too. Bits I like and haven't seen before are dragging images straight onto your phone and restaurant bills straight onto your credit card.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Music Aggregators

Two aggregator sites/reccomendation engines that are good for discovering music: Hype Machine and Critical Metrics.

Google maps to add Quicktime-VR-style interactive Flash street views

Article here

Demo here

Curses

Peggle

My new favourite game.

A mixture of Arkanoid and Bagatelle. Some wonderful touches. Good learning curve.







Found by: The guys at Renderheads

Apple Display Technology

From http://fun-4-amdavadi-gujarati.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=73&topic=613.0

Reno Balloon Race 2006

I just called to say...

http://odeo.com/audio/11569773/view

'I don't give a damn if you're twelve years old...'

Not the usual e-cards one would expect.

Warning: Some are a little rude.







Found by: Mike

55+ represent 22.0% of UK visits

Heather Hopkins of Hitwise has picked up on an interesting trend - the rise of the 55+ online. Compare 2007 with 2005 below: But, wealth continues to be a divider - the very poor are are under represented and the wealthiest are far more active.

Rube Goldberg Machines

There's some really clever bits of mechanics in some of these machines.

Gentle leaking

Another Transformers trailer.



It would seem that a large part of the budget, that could have been spent on dialogue, has been redirected to CGI.



No reason not to see it though.



Found by: Conor

FlashPaper in action

Not sure if it's still called this after Adobe.

A bit like a PDF without the hanging browser.



This is a paper from Magus who provide automated digital web standards management.

And the overview from Adobe.

Salvation - VJ realtime video mixer

The thing is, there's a 30 day free trial so worth a look.

Short demo.

More Firefox Bloat? (Wired)

Further to Daniel's Firefox post, thought I'd post a link to this article from Wired magazine. It looks forward to the new Firefox release (3.0, coming in the summer), and provides good insight into the balance between adding new features and keeping the browser as lightweight as possible. To be fair to Firefox, a lot of the gripes about the new version are based on the beta version, which is bound to be buggy.

I stopped using Firefox a while back, mainly because of how slow it was making my machine run, and because on OS X, it behaves unpredictably when doing basic things - so it was good to see this post by a member of the Mac team at Firefox, asking "What sucks about Firefox on the Mac?" The gripes in the comments are all familiar.

You think you've deleted something from your hard drivce

but that's rarely the case.

Apocryphal stories cite HDs burnt, drowned and smashed but still giving up data that had been in the Recycle Bin and then emptied.



So create some noise on the drive with Eraser.

Is it just me or is Firefox stealing lots of CPU lately?

I found this.



http://www.ccleaner.com/



Firefox seems to bloat when the cache is huge and it tries to be a bit too clever.



Good for fixing invalid registry entries also.



Source: Conor

Am I really lowering the tone with this?

"Perfect for cosplay or everyday wear! I wear mine all the time."

That's a quote. Not a quotation.







Get these and more at bunnywarez

.

Found by: A friend

Apple moving to LED-based displays

(Artist's impression)

Apple recently announced its intentions to switch from LCD displays to LED-based display technology. Initially the displays will be available in the MacBook Pro line, but will filter down to MacBooks soon.

If you believe what the internet has to say, LED displays are brighter, better quality, longer-lasting, thinner, toxin-free, and less power-hungry than LED displays. Phew.

Read the full story here.

Alfresco: Open source document management

The CMS / document management is crowded and confusing. Many of our clients seem to spend a fortune on systems that really don't seem to function very well. Alfresco has a core management team from documentum - the grand daddy of document management. This pedigree makes it interesting. I heard about it via this podcast from Phil Windley: "Alfresco is the leading open source alternative for enterprise content management. The company's CTO, John Newton, joins Phil, Scott, and Ben to discuss how Alfresco uses an open source strategy to assist organizations to manage the capture, storage, security, revision control, retrieval, distribution, preservation and destruction of documents and content. In addition to reviewing the technical aspects, he talks about the practical uses of the system." John Newton - Technometria: Enterprise Content Management

Powered by ScribeFire.

The IBM "Bow Tie" Theory

As part of a big IBM research project back in 2000, scientists identified 4 distinct types of site based on connectedness. Google page rank naturally gives higher ranking to those sites at the core. Most site would naturally like to be part of the core, but this means you have to have good links away from the site in addition to incoming. This idea is often billed as a 'link strategy'. Often brand sites seem very reticent about linking out to 3rd party sites, particularly if they provide better content. This model give a good argument for explaining why linking away doesn't 'leak' traffic, but makes the site better findable.

Stage6 : Youtube in HD

A friend just watched Spiderman III on stage 6, as he says "its a screener but amazing quality shot on HD with no one in the cinema..." I think it's been out in the UK for about two weeks. Unlike youtube, all the South Park episodes haven't been pulled...yet. Like youtube, enjoy while the good times last.

Originally found via tv-links.co.uk

Peole actually want to buy broken iPods. So be Green.

And do it.







BuyMyBrokeniPod.com



We don't care if the iPod has a cracked screen, the hard drive busted or shows a sad face, buttons don’t work, is acting weird, is old and creepy, has water damage, or if the battery is dead. Click below to get a price quote, and in 3 easy steps turn your broken iPod into CASH!





Source: Springwise

Ice breaker

Ice breaker
Originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

"Here's a simple but effective way to break the ice and introduce people at your next meeting or event. It's a good way to get people into a brainstorming/creative mood and sets the tone for a creative meeting.

1. Give everyone an index card and a colored marker (it's better if everyone has a different color).

2. Have each person fold the card in half to make a table tent.

3. On the front, have them write their name and draw their "supermask" (as in, if they were a superhero, what would be their mask?).

4. On the back, have each person write their "supername" and "superpower."

5. Go around the room and have each person describe their card to the group."

Play MP3s on your DS

Plug this in:







Stick your music on an SD card.

And away you go.

Only £20.



Found by: Conor

Source: ebuyer

Google Earth - Conor's route to work

Conor captured his route to work with a combination of his M3100 and GPS



If you haven't got it already, download Google Maps.

Then download the kml file containing the journey data. It just under a Mb because waypoints were set every few metres.



Open in Google Earth.

Select Path is checked then press Play.

Making a case for Windows Media Player 11

There are many reasons to like iTunes. It’s a good piece of software. But here are the reasons why I'd consider not using iTunes...



1. It’s a total system hog and runs at a snails pace. Fine for the desktop, nasty for the laptop.

2. The search is 10 times faster in WMP11. The most important component in the entire application.

3. Breadcrumb on WMP11 is the one feature that I use all the time. Very useful. AFAIK iTunes only has the back and the forward buttons.

4. DRM [clippped]

5. I find WMP syncs the same number of MB in about 1/10th of the time (through the same cable and the same computer USB port). Not really an issue with a shuffle I will admit but pretty nasty with anything over 4GB.

6. No Windows Media Centre integration. WMP with the iPod just plugs in and works a charm.



If you want to synch your iPod with WMP, then could use this:

http://www.mgtek.com/dopisp/

Mulitmap redesign

Mulitmap has been overhauled and is now miles better! Click the 'try our new site' button at the top if it doesn't happen automatically. There are some excellent printing features and you can do a regional eBay search... www.multimap.com/

Map of online communities

Apparently this is old and is a repost, but nevertheless it's worth a look - I like the minute peninsula of 'attractive myspace pages'

Sensory branding

Companies tune in to the potential of sound



You may not have heard of Walter Werzowa, an Austrian composer, but you know his work. He is the man responsible for Intel's “sonic logo”, the five notes that interrupt PC advertisements whenever the chipmaker is mentioned. Intel's success in creating awareness of a product that consumers do not see shows how sound can be an effective (and irritating) branding tool.



Rest of the article on the Economist site.