My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-2-7)
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-31)
This hideaway messenger bag from Timbuk2 takes the reusable grocery bag concept to a whole new level. Plus, it comes in lime green. Timbuk2 is great. And made in SF.
That’s pretty incredible.
Howling at the Moon: The Poetics of Amateur Product Reviews
Design criticism is, by necessity, more self-aware of its proximity to the marketplace than are other critical genres like art or literature. It must deal explicitly with the mechanics of making, retail, and distribution — the greasy wheels of commerce — and that’s why the primary location of today’s design criticism at the heart of the biggest online marketplace, Amazon.com makes so much sense. Online customer reviews deal with design on its own terms; they understand design’s unique complicity with commerce.
Good read at Design Observer.
Explain IA (via tylertate)
Ted’s “short, nerdy exposé on the iPad”
8226:
To my tech friends: (with and without a capital ‘T’). I was struck today watching the announcement of the iPad, that Apple is fulfilling the rather specific prediction of tangible/ubiquitous computing forefathers Hiroshi Ishii and Mark Weiser of MIT.
In his Sept. 1991 paper titled “The Computer for the 21st Century”, Mark Weiser identifies the following characteristics of future computing. Note the description and names of the things too (tabs=iphone, pads=ipad, boards=_______)
“The Computer for the 21st Century” by Mark Weiser
Summary: Make computers an invisible part of people’s life by seamlessly integrating them into the world.
- divert attention from a single box (like a monitor) and make the system aware of its surrounding
- create tabs, pads, and boards that scale in different sizes (from post-it sizes to blackboard sizes)
- pads are a cross between paper and laptop (think of them as “scrap computers”)
- they need to be cheap, low- power computers (this is easy for the smaller tabs, not so easy for the bigger ones)
- they also need to have software for ubiquitous applications and a network that ties all the tabs together but this is a bit difficult right now with operating systems that don’t have different hardware & software configurations for changing surroundings
- this type of ubiquitous computing will prevent information overload and make more information available at our fingertips at any time, anywhere
This is awesome: Vans and the places where they were.
(via @gelatobaby)
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-24)
Head-up display: factors
There are several factors that engineers must consider when designing a HUD:
- field of vision — Since a person’s eyes are at two different points, they see two different images. To prevent a person’s eyes from having to change focus between the outside world and the display of the HUD, the display is “Collimated” (focused at infinity). In automobiles the display is generally focused around the distance to the bumper.
- eyebox — displays can only be viewed while the viewer’s eyes are within a 3-dimensional area called the Head Motion Box or “Eyebox”. Modern HUD Eyeboxes are usually about 5 by 3 by 6 inches. This allows the viewer some freedom of head movement. It also allows the pilot the ability to view the entire display as long as one of his eyes is inside the Eyebox.
- luminance/contrast — displays must be adjustable in luminance and contrast to account for ambient lighting, which can vary widely (e.g., from the glare of bright clouds to a moonless night approach to a minimally lit field).
- display accuracy — aircraft HUD components must be very precisely aligned with the aircraft’s three axes – a process called boresighting – so that displayed data conforms to reality typically with an accuracy of ±7.0 milliradians. Note that in this case the word “conform” means, “when an object is projected on the combiner and the actual object is visible, they will be aligned”. This allows the display to show the pilot exactly where the artificial horizon is, as well as the aircraft’s projected path with great accuracy. When Enhanced Vision is used, for example, the display of runway lights must be aligned with the actual runway lights when the real lights become visible. Boresighting is done during the aircraft’s building process and can also be performed in the field on many aircraft.[3] Newer micro-display imaging technologies are being introduced, including liquid crystal display (LCD), liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS), digital micro-mirrors (DMD), and organic light-emitting diode (OLED).
- installation — installation of HUD components must be compatible with other avionics, displays, etc.
Via Wikipedia
