Blog posts tagged as 'friday links'

This is my first Friday links. First up is attention to detail which is something we all take very seriously.

Joe found this brief DVD extra from the excellent (and very Scottish) Brave from Pixar where they went to extraordinary levels of detail right down to the modelling of individual threads

A slightly longer example of this level of detail was picked out by James from back in the day on Wall-E.

It’s always nice to see something that we’ve put out in the world get picked up and adapted somewhere else. Timo found this library of objects inspired by our own iPad light painting.

This example even has an audio guide track to help with the painting.

Running Man from Hugo Baptista on Vimeo.

I’m writing this whilst BERG drive time plays in the background so it is fitting that two musical links tickled our fancy this week. The first found by Fraser suggests that;

“Now, for the first time in history, this compilation uses innovative digital techniques to convert historic “pictures of sound” dating back as far as the Middle Ages directly into meaningful audio.”

Not sure what that actually means but worth a look at dust-digital.com/feaster

At the other end of the spectrum the good folks at Google Creative Labs have put together another Chrome experiment so you can ‘Jam’ in real time at jamwithchrome.com. I have it on good authority that if you hold down the keys A. C. I. D. at the same time you get an 303 drum machine as an easter egg (but that may not be true).

All around us we see the cost of new technology dropping precipitously, not least with the Txtr Beagle e-reader costing a mere £8 and which Jack found recently reviewed in the Guardian.

We were really impressed until James noted that;

“The txtr beagle can be offered at such a low price because its cost will be subsidised by mobile carriers. The beagle itself won’t be sold individually; you’ll only be able to get one is by purchasing it when you sign up for a mobile phone contract on specific carriers.”

So how much does it cost really?

Finally I’m very relieved to say that even your Jeans can now get involved in Social Media.

Denise found this over at PSFK and I’m sure you will be glad to hear you can share your ‘happiness level’ featuring eight different modes to choose from – how did we ever cope until now?

This week we’ve clicked on:

The ‘two-screen’ video game ‘Forza Horizon’ and it’s partnering ‘Smartglass’ app.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/30/forza-horizon-smartglass-experience-app-now-available-on-windo/

App-controlled lighting from Philips.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/48209/philips-hue-led-bulb-customises-your-homes-lighting

BUY DREAM NOW! Suidobashi Heavy Industry is offering the chance to buy a functional mecha suit.

http://suidobashijuko.jp

If this dream is yours, it’s likely to have been shaped by the long lineage of ‘Mobile Suits’ in Manga such as Gundam or Evangelion.

Cousin of The Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader in Aliens.

Which is still inspiring Halloween costumes twenty-six years later.

http://i.imgur.com/0Mh6G.jpg

We read how a Videogame God Inspired a Twitter Doppelgänger — and Resurrected His Career

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/10/ff-peter-molyneux/

Also, http://www.webe.at launch a dramatic launch video for their customisable calendars.

http://vimeo.com/51447275

Which rivals Kanye West’s ‘All of the Lights’ for title of most intense psychedelic typographic bombardment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAfFfqiYLp0

A striking reference to the title sequence of Enter The Void.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E

And we’ll leave it at that.

It’s Friday, and therefore time for a look at what’s been flying around the studio mailing list!

Timo sent in a link to a Bat for Lashes cover story on Pitchfork which features some well paced parallax and animation effects.

Staying in the same vein, Saar posted a link to a BBC News article cum infographic entitled James Bond: Cars, catchphrases and kisses.

Joe shared the latest Boston Dynamic / DARPA robot video that was allowed to become public. Just think what they must have left on the cutting room floor.

Alex posted a video of an odd looking experimental car from Nissan called the Deltawing.

In commemoration of CEEFAX closing down this week, I posted a link to a lovely, nostalgic Twitter client called Twefax.

Lastly, I’m sneaking this in as a bonus, since it didn’t get posted to our internal mailing list, but it’s an interesting peek into the hidden infrastructure that is needed to run very large scale web services.

That’s a wrap. Have a good weekend folks!

Sunday is the new Friday, and at the end of a busy week, it’s always nice look to back and realise what a fab bunch you’ve spent it with. Of late, we’ve had lots of freelancers in the studio and these links are a celebration of a few of them.

Greg Borenstein, straight from the U.S. of A., who very kindly sent some last minute links to the group and reminded me that I should be doing this. Greg is being superman this week. Evidence below.

Ever been to an airport? Greg has. Ever seen carpet? Greg has.

Carpets for airports

Know species of bees that make plastic? Greg does. Nuff said.

From pollen to polyester

Saar Drimer has been making magical hardware things that I’ve pretended to understand for weeks now. He likes hot sauce and went to Lennie’s when no one else would. This week, Saar and Alex sent round links for designing circuit boards online.

 http://www.circuits.io/       http://upverter.com/

Fraser Lewry, besides being master baker and all-round music aficionado, has been helping out with all things copy. He’s been writing our Little Printer blog for weeks and it’s worth Sunday afternoon read if you haven’t been keeping up.

Pawel Pietryka is nuts. He’s a bit German, bit Polish, and likes to make ze pardy. Aside from telling us to “Shhhhhtop it”, he’s in charge of making things look beautiful (and make them look beautiful he does). What’s funny about our relationship with Pawel is that he thinks we’re odd. This became apparent when he sent us all an email entitled ‘Explains some of your behaviours BERGlers‘

A roundup of links from the last week or so, with no particular theme:

Mash Hits is a series of music tracks made from every UK number 1 single, and I wouldn’t recommend listening to them late at night alone in a dark alleyway.

The October 5 edition of Entertainment Weekly had a smartphone inside it.

Animal ears you can control with your mind.

Houseplants that can control, well, whatever you like, through capacitive touch.

A nice idea for halloween if you’re handy with a peeler and knife: DJ Pumpkin.

Throwback to school days: history of earth in a 24-hour clock. Always a bit humbling.

Digits: a wrist-worn gloveless sensor for hand gesture tracking.

Finally – Felix’s giant leap.

FRIDAY LINKS IS BACK, BABY.

It has been six weeks since the last Friday Links, I googled “friday links” and the top two hits were both BERG. It was then that the gravity of the situation hit me. Many people employ offices full of gap year arts students to write fluff pieces linking to their blog in order to gain the coveted top hit on Google. We got there just by tirelessly posting links every Friday. And then they just slipped away.

Well, this is the relaunch. Friday Links is Britney, and the last six weeks were it’s 2007. I’ll be fighting tooth and nail and bullying who I have to bully to get Friday links on the blog each week from now on.

FIRST LINK:
http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/
This post has been all over Twitter and for good reason. In a lengthly but well worth reading essay Bret Victor responds to the Khan Academy’s online environment for learning to program. What results is a brilliant specification for an interactive environment for acquiring the mindset for coding. I hope somebody takes this design and runs with it.

NEXT UP:
I saw this via @fat on Twitter. Swiping though GIFs! I dare you not to lose 15 minutes just clicking and swiping.

PENULTIMATELY:
So, do you want to see what the guy who lead the team that invented the Roomba, Rodney Brooks, is up to now? (The answer is a definitive ‘yes’). Since leaving his post as CTO of iRobot in 2008, Brooks has been working on a robot that he hopes will revitalise American manufacturing:

“My aspirations are high for this robot. This is the first mass-produced, slightly sentient humanoid robot”

Here’s the video:

Check out the full article

AND FINALLY:
This article about the cave systems that run under Nottingham has made me want to visit Nottingham quite a lot: http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/caves-of-nottingham_11.html

Feel free to tweet about our exciting relaunch using the #fridaylinks hashtag.

This week we travel to Mars vicariously through the Curiosity Rover.

Firstly, a panorama!

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA16029_modest.jpg

Secondly, a GIF!

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/674831main_pia16014_full.gif

And let’s not forget about the Opportunity rover which has been there since 2004.
One of the many panoramas it sent back:
http://www.panoramas.dk/mars/greeley-haven.html

Lastly, a sunset sent home by the Spirit rover in 2005, and I reiterate … FROM MARS!!
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_481.html

Strange times are these in which we live. Exciting too.

N.B. Thanks to http://istwitterwrong.tumblr.com/post/29049627659/are-those-pictures-of-mars-from-the-curiosity-rover for fact straightening. Via Alice Bartlett. And Andy Huntington received an honourable mention for providing much moral support during the curation of these links.

– “We took a rat apart and rebuilt it as a jellyfish”

– Cat Tunnel Sofa

– Lightning at 7,207 FPS

– Sprouts

– 5,500 pixels illuminated by digital light

– The first CGI? From 1963

– “Knightmare: Television for the videogame generation”

– And finally, retro-interactive-olympics themed niceness from the guardian.

It’s customary to say ‘thank God it’s Friday’, but I’m not religious, so instead, ‘Thank the internet for Friday links!’

This week’s line-up features an abundance of robots, flying things, invisible stuff and bears, so if you like flying robot stuff (and bears), you’re in for a treat.

ROBOT STUFF

• Asimo vs Big Dog
• Robot grabbing

FLYING STUFF

• Human powered flight
• Dragons
• Drones as pets
• Quadrotor dancing (FLYING ROBOT STUFF)

INVISIBLE STUFF

• Bikes
• Tube stations
• Skateboards
• Sporty data viz

BEARS

• bear71 
• Baby bear in garage

Happy weekend-ing all.

Well, inevitably after I gave the others loads of stick for not getting the weekly links out on a Friday, I don’t manage it either. Humble pie for brekkie on Monday when I see them all next.

Anyway!

Here’s what was flying around the studio e-mail list this week.

Alex found this 121-megapixel satellite photo of Earth

Denise pointed us at these lovely British birds made of Lego.

Andy caused much excitement (and used many exclamation marks in his email) when he announced there was a new Katamari Damacy soundtrack…

A slo-mo jumping (portly) cat!

James pointed to the interesting, elegant UI details used in the new iteration of the (already-rather-good) Soundcloud.

Take a look at the video here of a flying robot that swoops to perch on a human’s hand like a falcon. It gets incredible around a minute and thirty seconds in…

Andy pointed out this very interesting development in home automation and ‘domotics’ from a startup called “Electric Imp” as reported on Gizmodo:

Electric Imp came out of hiding today, announcing a line of Imp cards that can be installed on any electronic device to put it online and even control it. The little cards appear almost identical to standard SD cards, but have WiFi antennae and embedded processors. You can install them to existing devices using some of the circuit boards Imp sells, and the company is in talks with OEMs to get them Imp slots pre-installed on a range of products. Once installed, they connect to the Internet and Imp’s cloud-based software controls, allowing them to both be controlled remotely and work in conjunction with other connected devices.

One to watch perhaps.

Matt Webb pointed out this interesting company, http://www.quadrigram.com/ who market themselves as a visual programming language for creating visualisations from complex streams of live data (for instance from sensor-laden nets of things…)

Andy pointed to http://chirp.io/ who’s stated aim from their website is to ‘teach the machines to sing’ but making links into music…

James shared http://littlebigdetails.com/ with the list, which does precisely what it says on the tin. Lots of very nice UI touches of the sort that lift a product or service to an extra level of consideration, commodity and delight.

And finally, as a nod to the biggest film of the year so far, and tribute to the recently-deceased illustrator/author, here’s how Maurice Sendak might have drawn the Avengers.

Have a great week!