Links: Fashiony and Tiny and Making Do

February 26th, 2010 by Tom Armitage · 1 Comment

Over lunch on Thursday, Russell showed us his S2H Replay – a really simple “activity monitor/pedometer thing“. I really liked his post about it earlier in the week:

it feels way more like the future than the fitbit because it’s cheap, fashiony and simple.

The Replay is $20. It doesn’t need any connectivity to share your fitness scores – a code appears on the Replay’s screen and you type it into the S2H website. It makes a smiley face when you’ve done enough exercise. And that rubber bracelet is clearly designed to be replaced/customised/given away as a freebie.

Russell’s post has lots more detail and insight. As well as the device, I liked Russell’s use of “fashiony” as a watchword: something that feels fun and now and a little bit pop. Or to use a metaphor: the Replay isn’t Ikea, it’s American Apparel. For something like the Replay, I think that’s a good quality to have.

Makedo looks like a fun take on construction toys: “a set of connectors for creating things from the stuff around you“. It’s a construction set made only of connectors and hinges; the raw materials are left for you to find. The video above has some good examples of its possibilities. My only doubt is if Makedo is toy-ish enough; the website makes it seem targeted more to an older, crafting audience. But there’s a charm and inventiveness in both the toy, and the play it enables, that I like, and I think that makes it worth a link. (Via Alice Taylor, who saw Makedo at the Toy Fair).

I think this was my favourite thing I saw this week: a downloadable game for Nintendo’s DSi. The aim of the game is to find letters hidden in 3D scenes, styled a bit like a cardboard toy theatre, by tilting the device around. The video you need to see is the second one down on this page – I can’t embed it. It’s mindboggling: a game all about perspective and visual trickery, which looks utterly beautiful. Even more impressively: the DSi has no accelerometer, just two 640×480 cameras – so all that movement is being calculated through motion tracking.

I was mainly taken with how beautiful it was, though. The only sad thing: I don’t read Japanese, I have no idea what it’s called. I hope it comes out in the English-speaking world soon.

Image: taken from Amos Topping’s slide of Radiolarians

Anne Galloway linked to this great SEED slideshow of Victorian Microscope Slides.

Some beautiful images here, but also a fascinating juxtaposition of scientific marvel – “tiny objects now made visible” – with aesthetics – “tiny objects arranged beautifully“. (Anne’s original post; the collector Howard Lynk’s own website)

Finally: scratching and drumming with a set of holographic heads. (via Scott Beale). This is a live performance of Chris Cairns’ Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs inc, and elevates it from “nifty video effects” to something far more ingenious. It made me laugh, too.

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