Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops

In Microsoft's future, the identity of the person determines the environment around them. For example, the windows in this taxi call on the user's calendar and a geographic database to display an augmented reality view of the city. Via: techrepublic.com

The Future of Gaming: A Portrait of the New Gamers

Latitude Research has recently presented interesting statistics, more information via Situated Research's Blog

Human Bodies as Flowers and Butterflies

Cecelia Webber's images are made up of hundreds of nude bodies which become a spectacularly different whole.

In an interview for The Sun, Cecelia described part of the process and more of her thinking: "It can take a great deal of time to get the correct photograph and I often take over 50 photos of a single pose to bring what I see in my head into reality. But I hope to encourage people to think differently about their own bodies." Via: environmentalgraffiti.com

Colour variantions and names

Do you know what colour golden rod is? Or ghost white ? The table at w3schools.com gives some colour suggestions for common colour names, along with their hexadecimal values. Naturally, there are many different colour codes that can be considered belonging to a particular colour, you will find suggestions by using the links next to each of the colour.



Pure colours like pure red or green are rarely used in the creating of colour schemes. Black, white or gray can be added to the pure colour to change its characteristic in a specific way. The words "tint," "shade" and "tone" are technical terms that describe each particular kind of change.
Here: A Bit More About Color - The Color Wheel


Tone - A colour with some gray added.

Shade - A colour that has been darkened by the addition of black.

Tint - A colour that has been lightened by the addition of white.

Useful could be 0to255 a web tool created by Shaun Chapman that helps web designers find lighter and darker colours (tints and shades) based on any colour.

City In A Bottle

City In a Bottle is an interactive project bordering between art, science and games, a virtual ecosystem of plants and insects. The game world mechanics are based on the principles of emergence and evolution by natural selection. Complex social behaviour and new life forms will evolve by themselves as the game progresses. The game engine is an open source, cross-platform version of NodeBox optimized for hardware-accelerated image processing, "NodeBox for OpenGL" a NodeBox-spinoff.



It is a very interesting project developed in a small interdisciplinary team of artists, musicians and computer scientists:
Champ d'Action (Belgium-based ensemble for contemporary classical music). Scientific advisor is Johan Gielis (author of the superformula, first published in the March 2003 American Journal of Botany). People working on City In A Bottle: Nicolas Marinus (project manager), Ludivine Lechat (visual artist), Tim Vets (Champ d'Action, musician), Frederik De Bleser, Tom De Smedt. Via:Tim Vets

More about the project via Ludivine Lechat and some interesting parts from behind the scenes such as a background scenery trough the Procedural architecture.



A moodboard explaining the basic feel of the City In A Bottle environment.

The Portal 2 Underground Poster Kit

Beautiful artwork from the legendary game Portal 2 Underground as a poster kit includes one of each of the following posters: 1940s Aperture Signs, 1980s Boss Robot, 1980s Four Office, and 1870s Mannequin.
Available from est. 10/ 5 for $15 at Thinkgeek

Surreal ceramics

Kate MacDowell's ceramic sculptures combine elements from anatomy, transforming the natural world in unexpected and surreal ways. Is There an Ecological Unconscious?

Infographics as a visual resume

Vizualize.me is a different approach to your resume. The application can turn your boring LinkedIn profile into a beautiful infographic in one-click! All through the power of code — no graphic design skills required.

Mechanical Mirage

Mechanical Mirage is a fantastic collection of works from Japanese artist Kazuhiko Nakamura AKA Almacan. His work combines surrealism and cyberpunk using Shade (3D software) and Photoshop.

7 ways games reward the brain

Tom Chatfield in TED talk proposes seven ideas for motivating and engaging people on the basis of observing many games’ stunning power as engines of human engagement. Games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that engage the brain and keep us questing for more.

Color Cycling with HTML5

2D pixel graphics of old are making a comeback thanks to mobile devices and web games. It is good time to reintroduce color cycling, using open web technologies like the HTML5 Canvas element. Joe Huckaby writes about his HTML5 rendered color cycling. Check the demo (Art by Mark Ferrari Code by Joseph Huckaby). It is an implementation of a full 8-bit color cycling engine, rendered into an HTML5 Canvas in real-time. Read also Josephs "Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into A Game" on gizmodo.com.au

Thirteen Queens

Thirteen Queens is work Swiss artists Alex Gertschen & Felix Meier created in AlexandFelix their own photographic studio - Without the use of computers, Alex and Felix stage their very own worlds, they do Stage Photography, but from their own, poetic point of view. Via: trendland.net

Animal acoustics

Wired science presents interesting gallery of animal sound and analyses of physics that produce them, based on research of bioacoustician Christopher Clark of Cornell University.

Making Apps That Don’t Suck

"Mike Lee considers that a software engineer makes great applications not because he follows good rules but because he has a better way of looking at the world and he learns from experience", Via Qcon. Presented at the QCon London 2011 Conference.

Do it together: The Rinpa Eshidan

In Japanise: "Rinpa" is a word created by the founders of the group meaning "to bring people together, while "Eshidan" essentially means "art crew." The Rinpa Eshidan is a team of artists brought together by a common creative expression. The group's main activities are performing in live-art events and creating videos of art in action. Members: Noiz-Davi, Daisuke Yamamoto, D.H.Rosen, Akari Sasai and XOLA. Via The Rinpa Eshidan website

Screenshots from one of my old favourites from 2006; 'puzzle'

Ana Somnia: The Light Sensitive Website

"Ana Somnia is a generative art project that emulates how we dream, combining animation, soundscapes and code. Kim Köster’s Illustrations merge in manifold permutations, seemingly the same, yet different each time. Switch off your lights to enter Ana’s dreamworld". When it becomes too intense flip the lights back on and it ends. Project by Rostlaub: autors of 99 rooms (2004)

Steampunk Mechanical Cheetah

Steampunk Mechanical Cheetah by Andrew Chase is made of electrical conduit, transmission parts, and 20-gauge steel. The cheetah has mechanical joints to allow some movement…se the animation!....and other creatures in Andrew world

GDC 2011's video talks

The GDC Vault service has debuted more free video talks from the 25th Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. You can find sponsored video lectures available in GDC 2011's 'free recordings' section. Photo: sesion: Video Games Turn 25: A Historical Perspective and Vision for the Future. Speaker: Satoru Iwata

Sand animation

Kseniya Simonova is a sand animator, an amazing artist and storyteller and the the winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent for 2009. Her YouTube video has become an internet phenomenon as millions of people watched her Amazing Sand Drawing. Via: Guardian.co.uk

Visualisation of earthquake analysis globally

7.2 quake in Japan, analysis of current situation globally - March 9, 2011



March 11, 2011 - Earthquake analysis/ update- a geologic record setting day

Via: http://www.youtube.com/user/dutchsinse#p/
Visualisation of earthquakes is made with Earthquake 3D, a freeware program possible to download from download.cnet.com/

3D API Molehill and Flash Player 11

On Sunday, February 27, Adobe provided general access to the beta-version of Molehill 3D API and Flash Player 11. Molehill uses GPU for rendering, allowing developers to achieve modern graphics in browser applications. You can download public builds, documentation, and Flex SDK from AIR and Flash Player Incubator on labs.adobe.com.

But to see the true value of these new technologies you need showcases. Alternativa LLC presents MAX Racer demo, built on proprietory Alternativa3D 8 graphics engine. First the video of this showcase was shown at Adobe MAX 2010. Info via: Flash and Flex Developer’s Magazine

Multicolr Search Lab

Idée Inc. extracted colours from 10 million of the most “interesting” Creative Commons images on Flickr. Using our Piximilar visual search technology you can search the collection by colour.

The Google Art Project

Explore museums and great works of art in the Google Art Project.
“You’ll find a selection of super high-resolution images of famous works of art as well as more than a thousand other images, by more than 400 artists—all in one place. And with Street View technology, you can take a virtual tour inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums.” via: Google’s Official Blog

Games and music

Saturday 19th February Mediamatic is organising the Opening Arcade Level 4: Handhelds, which introduces you to over 200 handhelds, and to a group of musicians who turned their Game Boys into musical instruments. See the source info at Mediamatic

The power of visualization

Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998" is a Multimedia artwork by Isao Hashimoto
It is a visualization of the 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 in various parts of the globe. Beautiful, and scary at the same time.

About "1945-1998" ©2003 by autor:
"This piece of work is a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world." via ctbto.org

"HOME" Time for reflection!!!

This fascinating film caring through the camera in bird's eye view, and through the beautiful song/sound a massage against the depletion of natural resources, and FOR the change of the way we living. "HOME" released 2009 is produced by EUROPACORP (Luc Besson) and ELZEVIR FILMS (Denis Carot), directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and supported the PPR Group as a non-profit film with the purpose to take a message of mobilization out to every human being. You can watch the full version at YouTube
More information about "HOME" at the official website: http://www.home-2009.com , about the Planet at: http://www.goodplanet.info and

"HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet."
Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Web & Interactivity

What is Web Interactivity? and How does one achieve it?
Curious? Check "Importance of Web Interactivity: Tips and Examples" by Poonam on
Hongkiat.com (Online Web and Interactivity tips for designers and blogers)

Picture: Magnivate Interactive Boutique Agency, one of presented examples.