#122; photographs

Take a look at this new technology that allows you to take photos and then focus them later. Amazing stuff. Read this post from the great Symbiartic Blog for more detail, but first have a play with these two images (click to focus on different areas). Amazing stuff:

#121; type, self-monitoring, WWF & BBC

First up, a great, seemingly endless, collection of typographic beauty. Really nice.

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Next up a feltron-esque bout of self-recording and lovely design from Ben Willers. Monitoring all your activities and creating huge data sets about your actions is a surprising thing to be catching on, but very interesting. I'm not sure I'd have the discipline and patience to record meticulously enough, though. This is very nice though:

What would our lives look like if every tiny, seemingly insignificant detail were to be visualised?
Every calorie, every step? Every minute and every penny?

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For those that way inclined, a review of the BBC's science coverage has been published. Quite interesting, though perhaps the more digestible approach would be to read the Guardian's comment piece on it. As ever, the comments at the bottom are as interesting as the article itself.

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And lastly, a very nice short advert from the WWF:


The world is where we live from WWF on Vimeo.


via curiosity counts

#120; The Botskers

The New Scientist has a great report from the first "Robot Film Festival".

A strange idea, and it aimed to...

...inject a sense of playfulness into traditional science and engineering and explore new frontiers for robotics before the technology is even possible.

 Sounds mostly like it is trying to raise the profile and get people talking about robots, and sounds like fun to me. Here are two of the films - the first is the "best film" winner, and the second shows the winner of the "Best Human Playing A Robot" character. Good stuff:


THE MACHINE from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

#117; Superhero Dinosaurs

Fairly unrelated, but totally wicked-awesome:

#116; Poo Chat

VIA

Not quite as much actual info about how the toilets will actually do what they promise as I might like, but very interesting, and promising, stuff nonetheless.

#115; Fonts for dyslexics, Alcohol is healthy...

Dyslexie

 Typography x medical research = awesome.

(VIA IT'S OK TO BE SMART)

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Why Alcohol Is Good For You

"It’s one of those medical anomalies that nobody can really explain: Longitudinal studies have consistently shown that people who don’t consume any alcohol at all tend to die before people who do. At first glance, this makes little sense. Why would ingesting a psychoactive toxin that increases our risk of cancer, dementia and liver disease lengthen our life span?"

Improved social lives and reduced loneliness seem to be the main explanation proposed. Really interesting stuff. Drink up
(VIA LONE GUNMAN)

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One for the reading list - the gallery on Wired.com makes this book look incredible - Field Notes on Science & Nature.

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Data Viz

Over at Visualising Data a fantastic set of resources, from tools to visualisation communities. 

After a big build up Visual.ly has launched, and looks like being fantastic. "Explore, Share, Create". Exciting times.

#114; Migration

Great visualisation project showing how people move between countries. Kinda hard to identify the countries you're interested in, but still really interesting. Click here to check it out.

113; Viruses and Censorship

Two great videos. Firstly, beautiful and informative video about Stuxnet, and the "anatomy of a computer virus"

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.


And an amazing video about internet access and censorship across the world. Fascinating - the "Soft War"


Both are concise, interesting and informative. Great.