Blog posts tagged as 'links'

We started this week, as all weeks should be started. With a video of a creature, on YouTube. Not a kitten, but a corvid. A crow.

There’s something completely delightful about this. As I watched it slide down the roof I found myself thinking – ‘Ha! nice, but lucky’. As I watched the rest of the video, I thought it was less luck, and more that the crow was having fun.

There’s some discussion about it here. I thought this was interesting:

‘… when humans look at a crow doing something human-like, they have a very hard time not seeing themselves as the crow.”

It reminds me of Hello Little Fella, where people see human faces in — as Wikipedia puts it — ‘vague and random stimulus’. Turns out there’s a word for that, and it’s Pareidolia. There’s also a word for the loss of this ability, ‘Prosopagnosia’. It’s taking a huge amount of strength not to fall down a Wikipedia worm hole right now, but the links are there if you have more time. (Chuck Close, a painter of hyperrealistic portraits has prosopagnosia. Apperceptive prosopagnosia is particularly interesting.)

Anyway, to continue.

Alex shared a link to a beautiful 360 degree panorama from the Shard at dusk, and this periscope rifle. I hope the two are unrelated.

After some time out of the office, Matt Jones has been on a link-sharing roll this week. There’s an open source espresso machine (which came via Jennifer Magnolfi), and a piece entitled “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be”, by BERG friend Jamais Cascio, discussing the problems of future technology prediction.

There was also this Sinclair advert from 1983, and a rather spectacular advert for a dishwasher — a question of which Matt asks: “Is this the best advert ever? Lady fighter pilots, jetpack robot transforming baby bjorn dishwashers and coffee…”

Nick sent us this link of a 3d printing machine that works with concrete. It’s beautiful to watch…

And Alex also shared this link of a record player that plays slices of wood…

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

And that’s all for now. Early links this week – so enjoy the rest of the day, and have a great weekend.

Apologies for the late Friday links post! I had a rather epic Friday the 13th. Apparently there are two more of them in 2012 which is a lot for one year. (Damn these leap years that start on a Sunday!) I think I’ll spend those other two in bed. Or better yet, a cave. Anyway, to the good stuff…

Matt Jones sent us a link to this blog entry about the portrayal of Mars as a communist utopia in Russian popular culture. It’s worth having a look for the images if nothing else.

Also via Jones came a link to the new BMW Art Car designed by Jeff Koons which Jones described as “well new aesthetic“:

Joe sent us a link to this BBC News story about Sesame Street teaming up with Microsoft and using the Kinect to create “two-way television”.

Nick sent a link to this video of dynamic face remapping which is both fascinating and quite creepy:

Face Substitution from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Simon sent us a link to PINOKY which looks like it might be fun to play with for all of about 15 minutes:

Finally, via our friend and former BERG colleague Tom Armitage we discovered Fingle, the iPad game based around the thrill of touching someone else’s fingers:

Fingle Gameplay Trailer from Game Oven Studios on Vimeo.

That’s it for this last week’s links! Enjoy your week!

A bumper crop of videos this week.

Denise pointed to this from Wired UK, 2D patterns assembling into 3D objects once exposed to light.

You’ve probably all seen this ISS timelapse by now. But I can’t stop watching it.

Chairman Bruce‘s Venn diagram on product invention merits study.

In the ‘things you can spend money on dept.’ Matt W pointed to this New Aesthetic backpack, and Alex pointed out that our friend Brendan Dawes has got his new Beep store up and running which is awesome.

From our ‘robot-readable world dept’, Kari shared this advert she saw for a children’s toy video camera with face tracking A.R. capabilities

In the ‘giant nutty land-art dept’ Andy shared this sculpture in Germany

Alex shared this ‘superhydrophobic’ nanotech

Reminds me of ‘The Man in The White Suit’…

Robofold! Robot-Readable-haircuts for footballers!! Rhianna vomiting ribbons!!!

Finally, Kari won ‘subject line of the week’ prize with her email to the list entitled ‘Big Brass Nuts’… Which turned out to be this marvellous film about hand-casting a short run of beautiful metal things rather than a meditation on Schulze’s sales techniques…

Have a great weekend!

Hello! It’s Friday, we’ve just done our usual Friday demos. I’m sitting at my desk with a can of polish lager and Matt Jones is playing Huey Lewis and the News. It’s probably time for a roundup of the things floating around the studio mailing list on week 334.

Nick sent around this link of an old experiment looking into male / female walking patterns.

We liked this site advertising a workspace in NYC. Simple but very nice.

Nick also sent around this research project from Microsoft, working on scaling up 8-bit pixel art for modern displays. I don’t think Denise agreed with it.

Denise sent around lumibots - “small, autonomous robots that react to light”.

Jones sent around a nice post on Chevrolet speedometer design over the ages (I’m a sucker for anything design – car related):

And then Andy sent around this picture of the dashboard of a Citroen CX dashboard, with cylinders that rotate to display dashboard info. I’m a massive fan of Citroen’s design from this era. Brilliant. Look at the steering wheel!

Finally, Matt Webb sent around some an email entitled ‘First words’, so I’ll end with the first words spoken on the telephone, from Bell to Watson in 1876:

“Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.”

I’ll leave you with a studio staple track as it’s been a slightly music themed weeknotes. I think we have BERG alumni Matt Brown to thank originally for introducing us to this. Have a good weekend.

The BERG studio list has been a bit quiet this week. I don’t know if it’s that everyone has been so buried in their work that they haven’t had much time to follow interesting links, or if it’s just been a quiet week out on the internets in general. A few noteworthy things have come floating past, though.

Via Matt Jones we discovered a simple but ingenious tool for any amateur tree climber: First Branch, “for when you want to climb a tree, but the first branch is just out of reach.”

Alex alerted us to Fast Company’s article about the NewProductWorks Collection where you can find “every product in food, beverage, household, health & beauty care, baby care, pet products, etc” going back as far as the 1960s. Of course “you” would need to be in a particularly qualified position because it is not, unfortunately, open to the public. I wonder if working for BERG would get me in. I would so love to see that.

Matt Jones sent this video of the Recon Scout Throwbot, a throwable robotic reconnaissance agent for use by the military, which doesn’t just seem like something out of science fiction, it actually is. (Sort of. Minus the intelligence anyway. So far…)

Also via Jones came news of a new ultrasound accessory for your smartphone. I’m sure there are plenty of celebrities who will be relieved to know that they only need to shell out $8,000 for their own private, in-home ultrasound equipment rather than $100,000. More seriously, this could be a great advance for global healthcare.

And finally, Joe delighted us with a magnetic liquid hedgehog from Russia:

Which then sent me into a rabbit hole of Ferrofluid videos on YouTube. There’s some pretty awesome stuff out there.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

It’s Friday the 7th of October, and this is Berg Friday Links.

The recommended soundtrack for this edition of Friday Links is Keygen Jukebox, provided by Andy, and my favourite link of the week.

Alex provided us with this link to a 1971 Nintendo product.

We got excited enough about this new Roland 3D hobby mill that we started talking about the games consoles we used when we were kids.

There’s been a bit of interest in Point Of View videos on the list, bringing up these examples: The Stampede by Biting Elbows, Cinnamon Chasers – Luv Deluxe, Prodigy – Smack My Bitch Up (NSFW) and the game Mirror’s Edge.

We also had a mini discussion on the greater debate around what now seems to have been coined wackaging. Denise, the person I would most trust on this issue, gave us this:

Main thing is that writing in that style and doing it well isn’t easy. And it’s not quick. It doesn’t just trip off the tongue, its not like writing an email to your mates. Get it right, and people like it. Get it wrong and it’s really offensive. It’s also very difficult to tell people how to get it right. Christopher Hitchens explains it better:

To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?” That had its duly woeful effect.

Alex provided us with this animated gif:

And finally, from Denise via She Went of Her Own Accord, is New Old Jokes Home:

My robot wife has gone to the Carribbean.
Jamaica?
No, she came ready-manufactured.

Have a good weekend.

Video Game in a Box by Teague Labs. Delightful.

danw’s Toby Barnes’ collection of glanceable displays and devices (above is dextr).

The reconstruction of what a person sees by measuring brain activity:

The left clip is a segment of the movie that the subject viewed while in the magnet. The right clip shows the reconstruction of this movie from brain activity measured using fMRI. The reconstruction was obtained using only each subject’s brain activity and a library of 18 million seconds of random YouTube video.

Physical graffiti that beautifies (via @urbnscl)

Time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station. WHOA.

With at least a quarter of the studio gone on any given day this week, it’s been a bit quiet on the studio email list, but there have still been a few gems popping up.

Alice sent round a link to “The Flashed Face Effect”: the phenomenon that normal faces flashing by look monstrous when you’re viewing them with your peripheral vision. It’s another one of those fascinating things the brain does, and scientists still aren’t really sure why.

Denise pointed out Bill DeRouchey’s SXSW presentation on The History of the Button. It’s a fascinating walk through the past century looking at how buttons developed, what they signified, where we’ve gotten to now and where things might be going.

Matt Jones found the utterly delightful Rapping Paper. I’d be tempted to just frame the Run DMC “It’s Tricky” paper and hang it on my wall.

Nick pointed us to Bacon Ipsum, for when your Lorum Ipsum needs to be a little meatier. Simon countered with his friend Katie’s Vegan Ipsum for those among us that eschew meat and meat products.

Another last minute entry from Jones: his friend Steve Murray created “Forty Fords”, a tribute to Harrison Ford in commemoration of his 40th credited big screen appearance.

And finally, just for fun (we do quite like a bit of fun round here after all), I will leave you on this lovely Friday with the inimitable Beeker, doing an impressive multi-dubbed video rendition of Ode To Joy. That is, until it all goes a bit… err… badly.

Have a great weekend!

A glut of interesting stuff on the studio list this week.

Matt Jones sent round an intro to Biophilia, Björk’s new multimedia project. As you’d expect from the small Icelandic bundle of re-invention, her new work is a departure from her previous oeuvre; Biophilia isn’t just an album, it’ll be accompanied by ten iPad apps. Her tour isn’t simply a tour. Starting with the Manchester International Festival, she’ll be continuing with a number of residencies across the world involving live performances and workshops.

Yesterday I watched the making of her new iPad-controllable celeste, the Gameleste. I love it, especially the little burst of Bach’s Invention No. 13 in A minor on organ in the middle:

The Gameleste – a custom instrument for Björk from Andy McCreeth on Vimeo.

Next door, RIG have been pumping out Robyn this morning ["I've got some news for you / Fembots have feelings too"], which seemed fitting as Matt Jones sent round Kevin Grennan‘s work The Smell of Control: Fear, Focus, Trust from this year’s graduate show of Design Interactions at RCA. It explores the blurring lines between robot and human interaction.

“The contrast between the physical anti-anthropomorphic nature of the machines and the olfactory anthropomorphism highlights the absurd nature of the trickery at play in all anthropomorphism”

Robot with sweat gland, from The Smell of Control

Mr Jones also sent round this genre mashup video. If only Amazon really sold a choose-your-own-adventure plot device button to sex up the weekend.

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Timo and Alex had their interest piqued by Nizo, which promises to bring Super 8 film goodness to the iPhone. I like the scrolling effect on their homepage. A nice way of tease-introducing the features which the app will contain.

Terminator 2 is twenty years old on Sunday. This stop-motion tribute is totally mesmerising:

Splitscreen: A Love Story was filmed entirely on a Nokia N8 and sent round the studio by Denise. Nicely shot, and not without a healthy dollop of romance-cheese.

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

Happy weekending!

Another Friday, another round-up of the various things that have been flying around the office mailing list this week.

Core 77 are running a feature on visualisations of The Metropolis in comics. Part 1 is all about the night:

Simon sent this around – a video from the camera mounted on each of space shuttle Endeavour’s rocket boosters:

Timo sent around the trailer for producer Amon Tobin’s live tour:

Matt Jones sent around Olafur Eliasson‘s latest exhibition ‘Your rainbow panorama‘ – a 360 degree viewing platform ‘suspended between the city and the sky’, which looks incredible.

Denise pointed us to this (via @antimega), a wonderful video of dust devils lifting plastic sheets from strawberry fields:

Finally, as the sun’s out here in London and music features fairly high on our agenda at 6pm on a beautiful Friday evening, Matt Webb sent around this video from Brighton based duo Rizzle Kicks – a superbly produced video, and quite a nice track as well. Enjoy!