31 August 2011

Beer Market Share ~ Who Slakes American Thirst

Randy at Cool Infographics spots cool data visualization from Philip Howard and Ginger Ogilvie at Michigan State focused on Beer!

Iskandar ~ Malaysia's Emergent New Metropolis

Very interesting to view the BBC story on Iskandar, a new super-metropolis in Malaysia practically surrounding Singapore at the heart of the greater ASEAN region...
"By 2025 Malaysia will have a brand new metropolis of three million people. But will tourists be tempted by what Iskandar has to offer? Several flagship projects are under construction, including luxury hotels, shopping centres and theme parks - all aimed at increasing investment in Malaysia."
"The development region encompasses an area about three times the size (2,217 sq km) of Singapore [...] Iskandar Malaysia is modelled after the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, it is envisaged to capitalize on its current synergies with Singapore as it aims to complement each other as an economic hub."

30 August 2011

Beavers Wanted ~ WSJ on Nature's Engineers!-)

Joel Millman writes in the WSJ that With Trouble on the Range, Ranchers Wish They Could Leave It to Beaver: Critters, Once Reviled, Gain Popularity With Believers; Good Rodent, Hard to Find...
"Woolery's ranch on Beaver Creek outside Kinnear, Wyo., has been beaver-free for decades, but he could sure use their help now. A small beaver colony, he says, would engineer dams that raise the water table under his pastures, opening up drinking holes for his cattle. [...] It's a bit of a turnabout in these parts, where beavers have long been considered something of a nuisance -- blamed for everything from damming irrigation canals and gnawing fruit orchards to just generally wreaking havoc with agriculture. [...] But their slick skill set is what many landscapes now need, says a cadre of pro-beaver ranchers and environmentalists [...] Trapping, not killing, "nuisance" beavers, they say, can add value to wilderness reserves and farmland by increasing their water content."
Nice to hear people like Nature's engineer!

Seamless Computing ~ nsquared's Demo Rocks!

Thanks to Vitor Pamplona for spotting Engadget's piece spotlighting nsquared's Seamless Computing demo video! Very cool...

Right to Record ~ 1st Victory on Videoing Police!

Thanks to Jeffrey Hermes from the Citizen Media Law Project for spotlighting A Victory for Recording in Public!
"CMLP is thrilled to report that in the case of Glik v. Cunniffe [...] the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a resounding and unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public. [...] Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007, after openly using his cell phone to record three police officers arresting a suspect on Boston Common. In return for his efforts to record what he suspected might be police brutality -- in a pattern that is now all too familiar -- Glik was charged with criminal violation of the Massachusetts wiretap act, aiding the escape of a prisoner and disturbing the peace. As tends to happen in cases like these, the charges didn't hold up [but he wanted to clearly fight for and win back his Constitutionally guaranteed Rights, so] in February 2010, Glik filed suit in federal court against the officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. Glik alleged that the police officers violated his First Amendment right to record police activity in public and that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without probable cause to believe a crime had occurred."
Bottom line? He won. And the opinion is full of pointed findings...
  • "In the First Circuit... this First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is established."
  • "Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause."
  • "[I]s there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative."
  • "Glik filmed the defendant police officers in the Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States and the apotheosis of a public forum. In such traditional public spaces, the rights of the state to limit the exercise of First Amendment activity are 'sharply circumscribed.'"
  • "[A] citizen's right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment."
  • "Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting 'the free discussion of governmental affairs.'"
This is epic. Bad cops everywhere -- you're on notice -- Citizen Crowd has a million eyes on you. You can no longer get away with either brutal misbehavior and corruption or arresting innocent citizen photographers and videographers who catch you in the act.

29 August 2011

Cities for People ~ Jan Gehl in Melbourne...

FORA.tv shares ABC's presentation of Jan Gehl in Melbourne speaking about Cities for People. Note especially his skewering of Brasilia and other examples of "Bird S#!t Architecture";-)

Green Architects ~ McDonough, Foster, Yeang...

William McDonough of Cradle-to-Cradle fame at TED...

Norman Foster of Masdar & Apple new campus fame at DLD... Ken Yeang of ecodesign fame... ...and more Yeang, here on CNN...

African Golden Cat ~ Rare Footage via Panthera!

CNN spots lovely African Golden Cat caught on hidden camera!
"Scientists tracking one of Africa’s most elusive and poorly understood animals say they’ve recorded a rare -- and possibly the only publicly released -- video of the species in the wild. The video, recorded by a motion-activated camera left in a Gabon forest, shows an African golden cat: a shy, medium-sized feline that ducks human contact and lives in hard-to-access parts of central African forests. “As far as we know, it’s never before been filmed (in the wild) for... the public domain,” said Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, the conservation group providing most of the funding for the team that captured the video this year."

Aurora Over Greenland ~ NASA Spots Casado Pix

Lovely image by Juan Carlos Casado of aurora spotted by NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day...

Inspiring Action ~ Sinek @ TED on "Why" Leaders

Thanks to Tim Bajarin for spotlighting Simon Sinek's TED talk on How Great Leaders Inspire Action...

Vinge on Futures ~ Freedom, SF, Singularity...

Reason.tv converses with author-educator Vernor Vinge on Freedom, Science Fiction, and the Singularity...
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. [...] There are Makers and Breakers in the world..."

Transformations ~ Joe Pine on Authentic Value...

MIT alum Joe Pine, pioneering author of Mass Customization and the Experience Economy, speaks on climbing the scale of economic value towards Transformations... And here at TED...


Jobs Advice ~ Pursue Dreams, Think Different

Jobs keynoted Commencement at Stanford in 2005...
"Do what you love. [...] Keep looking, don't settle. [...] Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
PS Special bonus! New Apple CEO Cook keynote at Auburn in 2010...

light bulb ~ Lieberman's Levitating Lumen Art

MIT's Jeff Lieberman & colleagues back in 2007 made this lovely levitating light bulb...
"The bulb and the casing contain hidden circuitry [...] that uses electromagnetic feedback to levitate the bulb roughly 2.5" from the nearest object, and uses coupled resonant wireless power transfer to beam power from the housing into the bulb itself."

Students vs Prisoners ~ MI Backwards Priorities

Randy at Cool Infographics shares the stupidly backwards priorities of Michigan which coddles prisoners while ignoring students...

28 August 2011

Green Inhabitats ~ More Delights by Design!

Time for another dose of Inhabitat designs!

Jobs Channels Maslow ~ Hierarchy of Skepticism!

At 1998 MacWorld, Steve Jobs channels Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs into Apple's Hierarchy of Skepticism! Survival, Stability, Strategy, plus...

Jobs Is Back ~ 1997 MacWorld Boston Update...

Thanks to Innovation Economist Scott Kirsner for spotting this 1997 "status update" by Steve Jobs at MacWorld Boston. This is the beginning of the recovery and revitalization of Apple... See also 1983 Mac intro!

Imaging Irene ~ Timelapse Weather Satellite View

Check out more NOAA visualizations, here timelapse satellite imagery of Hurricane Irene starting East of Puerto Rico...

Twenty-Four ~ Polydactyly Cuban's Extra Digits

The DailyMail says Meet 'Twenty-Four', the Cuban man proud of his four extra fingers and toes...
"They call him 'Twenty-Four.' Yoandri Hernandez Garrido's nickname comes from the six perfectly formed fingers on each of his hands and the six impeccable toes on each foot. Hernandez is proud of his extra digits and calls them a blessing, saying they set him apart and enable him to make a living by scrambling up palm trees to cut coconuts and posing for photographs in this eastern Cuban city popular with tourists. [...] Known as polydactyly, Hernandez's condition is relatively common, but it's rare for the extra digits to be so perfect."
I wonder if he can play musical instruments -- like piano, for example!

26 August 2011

Eyeborg ~ Rob Spence's Prosthetic Minicamera

Claire Bates of the DailyMail writes Meet the Eyeborg: Film-maker turns his prosthetic eye into a miniature video camera...
"A one-eyed documentary filmmaker has revealed how he has turned his prosthetic eye into a miniature video camera. Rob Spence, from Toronto, is able to record what he sees through his other eye. It is not linked to his brain and hasn't restored his vision. [...] The device crams a video camera, wireless transmitted and battery inside Rob's empty eye socket -- no mean feat when you consider the tallest space is only 9mm high. The 'eyeborg' then transmits a video signal to a handheld screen. [...] It can show others how he sees the world in real-time. [...The] tiny camera, just 3.2mm squared, was donated by OmniVision, a California-based company that specializes in the miniature cameras found in cell phones, laptops and endoscopes. It had a resolution of 328 x 250 pixels."

2010 Hurricanes ~ Mesmerizing Storm Timelapse

NOAA helps us visualize last year's Atlantic hurricane season with this mesmerizing timelapse of weather satellite images...
"The 2010 Hurricane Season tied with 1887 and 1995 having the third highest storm count on record with 19 named storms. But short-term weather patterns dictate where storms actually travel and in many cases this season, that was away from the United States. The jet stream's position contributed to warm and dry conditions in the eastern U.S. and acted as a barrier that kept many storms over open water. Also, because many storms formed in the extreme eastern Atlantic, they re-curved back out to sea without threatening land. This movie shows GOES-13 infrared imagery from June 1 through November 30, the official extents of the Atlantic Hurricane Season."

Apple Cores ~ Inspecting Some Glorious ICT Guts

Erica Naone writes in TR about Classic Hacks: the Apple I Computer, the iPhone, and the iPad 3G...

Apple Exponential ~ Revenue Over Past Decades

CNN Money writes of Apple's Financial Empire -- gone exponential...

Young Jobs ~ Introducing Apple Mac in 1983!

Young Steve Jobs intros Apples' Mac in 1983 vs IBM monolith PC...

25 August 2011

TweetQuake ~ Twitter Outraced VA Quake Vibes!

Twitter outpaced geological vibrations during recent VA 'quake!
"Inspired by XKCD, [here's a] heat map of the frequency of tweets mentioning the word "earthquake" in the 5 minutes after the Virginia earthquake on 08/23/2011. The locations are self-reported by Twitter users and may be erroneous. The spread of the earthquake is approximated to be 4000 m/s."
And see here actual seismometrics across the US...

Tokyo Skypartment ~ Roboparking + Penthouse

Brilliant solution to tight property constraints and need for income and housing in Lloyd Alter's Treehugger piece In Tokyo, Parking Cars Makes More Money Than Parking People...
"Land assembly is tough in Tokyo; families often have owned little tiny plots for generations. These become their main source of income and they rarely sell them, to develop them, they often build really silly and inefficient sliver buildings with minuscule footprints. This one, by Martin Van Der Linden of Van Der Architects, has a floor area of 74.4 square meters, or 800 square feet. [...] When the owners of a rather small plot of land in Central Tokyo approached us to design an apartment complex the discussion on return on investment quickly led to the idea to forget about apartments and to start thinking about parking. A parking tower has the possibility to create on a relatively small plot of land a high return on investment. The idea to make use of the almost fanatical desire to own a car and to take it to the centre of Tokyo (where it needs to be parked). The parking tower with a penthouse at the top is an opportunistic way of living in the centre of Tokyo while using other people's money to pay for the mortgage."

Ruby Bridges ~ Rockwell's Iconic Rights Portrait

Thanks to Cynical-C for spotlighting the iconic portrait of a young American Civil Rights heroine -- Ruby Bridges -- going to a newly integrated school as a six year old painted by no less than Norman Rockwell for Look Magazine... Earlier this year, President Obama met the adult Ruby Bridges Hall at the White House where her portrait is now hanging...

Vending Cycles ~ Copenhagenize Spots Cargo++

Very interesting to see via Copenhagenize such a variety of vending cycles used to sell food, drink, and other delights...

Utrecht Cycle Jive ~ Bikes in a Livable Dutch City!

Amy in .nl spots Utrecht Cycle Jive by Amsterdamize's Marc van Woudenberg! Bikes in my favorite Dutch city... And here's more proof courtesy A Flamingo in Utrecht that true civilization is indeed pedal-powered -- witness the beer bar bike!

24 August 2011

Etymotic's Earbuds ~ WSJ on Noise-Iso 'Phones

WSJ's Courtney Banks asks are they Worth It?: Etymotic's Noise-Isolating Earphones, with base price of US$180 and then for an extra US$100 people go to audiologist for mold-measurements enabling custom-fitting noise-isolation. Ultimately this is where MIT spinoff company Lantos Technologies will be game-changing. See report...

The Clothes Have No Emperor ~ Q'Daffy's Hat;-)

The Clothes Have No Emperor!-)

23 August 2011

Quakemetrics ~ BC's New England Seismometer

Magnitude 5.9 earthquake today Tuesday afternoon, 23 August 2011, epicentered in central Virginia. See more at NYTimes, USGS Quakemap, and BC's Weston Observatory seismometrics... P.S. Growing up in Silly Valley, CA I feared the Big One (that's still to come). Living here in the Hub of the Universe, I'm now far more afraid of the Category 5 hurricane that's going to barrel up the East Coast, probably this season...

CineSkates ~ Justin Jensen's Slider Photo Tool!

Check out CineSkates by MIT engineer-entrepreneur Justin Jensen and his Cinetics venture, an alumco from our Imaging Ventures class!
"A set of three wheels that quickly attach to a tripod and enable fluid, rolling video in an ultra-portable package [CineSkates] work specifically with the GorillaPod Focus tripod. A ballhead is also required... most small, strong ballheads will work great. Fortunately, JOBY, the maker of GorillaPod Focus and Ballhead X has agreed to include their products in the CineSkates System..."
Join me in backing them on Kickstarter! And check out their promo video made using CineSkates;-)

The Art of Engineering ~ James Dyson Elaborates

First, James Dyson at MIT on The Art of Engineering... And here Dyson describing his Air Multiplier fan...

22 August 2011

Greatest Cities ~ Griff Rhys Jones Super Series!

Check out Griff Rhys Jones's Greatest Cities series! Click on...

Boomerang Systems ~ Robo-Parking Solutions

I really like the Boomerang robotic car parking and container storage solution because it can both retrofit onto existing garage spaces (or custom designed ones) and densely space-pack with an all-electric, emissions-free solution. With a Kiva-like modular robotic valet, the system is more redundant and easier to maintain and service, plus a fleet of valet-bots can shift multiple vehicles simultaneously. Here's their promo..
"Boomerang's RoboticValet™ uses automated guided vehicle (AGV) technology and robotics to provide the most cutting edge solutions to handle any parking challenge. Unlike conventional steel rack and rail systems which have a limited range of motion, Boomerang’s RoboticValet™ rolls on solid concrete slab floors and can drive in any direction anywhere in the garage including underneath parked cars."
And here's the container storage solution...

Disney's Utilidors ~ Magic Kingdom Tunnels!

Interesting piece David Wallace on Magic Under the Park ~ Walt Disney World’s Utilidors...
"...when plans for Walt Disney’s second theme park in Florida were being developed, the Imagineers decided to design a system of tunnels under the park so that cast members and service people can travel from land to land without being seen by guests and thus help keep the magic in place. It was deemed an ambitious project at first, however, the creators were able to realize their tunnel designs. These tunnels would come to be known ads “Utilidors” short for “utility corridors." The first amazing fact about these “underground” tunnels is that they are not underground at all. While it is true they lie underneath the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, they are actual on ground level. The Magic Kingdom is built on top of the tunnel system."
Many more interesting details, including a walkthru... And here's a map of the underworld... And here's Disney's own Fact or Fiction revelation!

21 August 2011

Commanding Heights ~ History of Globalization

With the anniversary of transformative events on the mind, it's worth revisiting the PBS documentary Commanding Heights, available entirely online! An amazing saga...
"...a comprehensive overview of global economic history from the beginning of the First World War through 2002. Along with a six-hour video narrative divided into short chapters, it includes extensive interviews, essays, charts, reports, an interactive atlas of history, and economic data related to the topics of globalization, economic development, and international trade."
See here the promo trailer...

Supertall! ~ Skyscraper Museum Goes Higher!

Justin Davidson writes Higher in New York magazine about the Skyscraper Museum's latest exhibit, Supertall!
"A decade ago, the destruction of the World Trade Center briefly made skyscrapers seem like brontosaurs, too huge and fragile to survive; why offer fresh targets? The whole endeavor seemed insane. It’s not, though. There are now 47 buildings (complete or under construction) that are taller than the Empire State, plus the newly ­announced Kingdom Tower. “Supertall!,” a burst of excited clarity in the tiny but ambitious Skyscraper Museum, makes the logic clear. Any one skyscraper may spring from vanity and bluster (generous vices that also bequeathed us the pyramids of Giza), but the urge for height is growing more intense, and it is pushing architects and builders to spellbinding levels of invention and, yes, beauty. Let emirs erect ozone-scrapers on the dunes for their self-glorification. The lessons learned there will be applied in China, which needs as many as 50,000 new high-rises -- ten Manhattans -- by 2025, for the hundreds of millions of people pouring in from the countryside. China has nowhere to go but up… and up, and up."
Not a museum for pedestrian-calibre buildings, the curators insisted...
"To distinguish the rarified air of the super- from the merely very tall, the Museum made the benchmark 380 meters or 1,250 feet -- the height of the Empire State Building -- rather than the common standard of 300 meters."
Fantastic!

Flywheel Hybrids ~ Max von Stein's Flycycle!

Thanks to Star Simpson for spotting Maxwell von Stein's Flycycle, a flywheel-hybrid bicycle, in Science Friday's Boost Your Bike piece!

VIGIX ~ Turnkey Kiosk Vending Machines...

Very interesting to read this interview of my MIT Sloan classmate Eduardo Alvarez about his progress starting VIGIX and building turnkey modular kiosk vending machines! These general-purpose devices can be reloaded with standard cartridges which contain anything from Mobiles to Movies, Medicines to Toys, DVDs to Gift Debit Cards. Great idea. Check out their promo video...