observations and reports

Clock Opera - Once and for All (via sargespike) totally digging...

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:59:48 -0500

Clock Opera - Once and for All (via sargespike)

totally digging this song.

All you need is a pair of cheap USB webcams. Combine them with...

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:28:11 -0500

All you need is a pair of cheap USB webcams. Combine them with FourEyes3D into a live 3D stereo “virtual camera” that can be used in most QuickTime-compatible camera applications (almost everything). (via B-L-A-C-K-O-P - FourEyes3D | Live 3D Webcam | stereo 3D video | Apple, Mac

)

Palance - JW and Blaze on Vimeo (via Vimeo) Ha, that totally...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:54:05 -0500

Palance - JW and Blaze on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

Ha, that totally made my day! It even has cookie monster! and a bouncey bounce! at the office! with gratuitous furry references!!

Recognizr, an application that lets users point a smart phone at...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:06:15 -0500

Recognizr, an application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them — combining computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality — has been developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm.

A user points the phone’s camera at someone nearby. Software then detects the subject’s face and creates a unique signature by combining measurements of facial features and building a 3-D model. This signature is sent to a server where it’s compared to others stored in a database. Providing the subject has opted in to the service and uploaded a photo and profile of themselves, the server then sends back that person’s name along with links to their profile on several social networking sites, including Twitter or Facebook. (via Tech Valley Computing Culture)

Chilly Gonzales: Piano Talk Show with A-Trak (Part 2) tonight...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:20:00 -0500

Chilly Gonzales: Piano Talk Show with A-Trak (Part 2)

tonight vs. princess superstar, at joe’s pub.

Interesting Letterhead Designs | Letterheady Tesla’s...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:30:22 -0500

Interesting Letterhead Designs | Letterheady

Tesla’s letterhead.

Get your job done the smart way! Instantly tap into our 24x7...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:52:20 -0500

Woah, surprisingly like the biz plan version of goodship from 2002. No wonder why zuzu said we needed to incorporate offshore…

Micro helicopters, the kind that fit in the palm of your hand...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:32:15 -0500

Micro helicopters, the kind that fit in the palm of your hand (and sometimes spread holiday cheer) are huge fun — and hugely frustrating. Have you ever tried to get one to hover in place next to another? Impossible! MIT thinks it can do that, not with just two but thousands of the little beggars all hovering in harmony as part of a project called Flyfire. By using LED-equipped drones the project pledges to build free-floating 3D displays, endowing them with enough smarts and positional awareness to organize themselves into an airborne canvas. (via MIT’s Flyfire paints images in the sky using micro helicopters, is apparently top-secret — Engadget)

The map of the future (Wired Italia) on the Behance Network

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:19:46 -0500

The map of the future (Wired Italia) on the Behance Network

"I think you sell this with vision. I think you sell Troy as the place where you figure out gFiber..."

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:16:38 -0500

“I think you sell this with vision. I think you sell Troy as the place
where you figure out gFiber 2.0.”

- A.V.

Mike Elgan: How Google Buzz for mobile will change your life

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:58:41 -0500

Mike Elgan: How Google Buzz for mobile will change your life:

Mike Elgan: How Google Buzz for mobile will change your life

Think Buzz is just a two-bit FriendFeed clone that’s wrecking Gmail? Meet the other Buzz

Two weeks ago, I wrote a piece in this space called “Google Quietly Changes the World Again.” I pointed out that two new features rolled into the mobile version of Google Maps, called “Near me now” and “Explore right here,” partially realized the long-held vision of “virtual graffiti.” The idea is to post “invisible messages” in the air, which could be read by a cell phone if you’re in that same location.

That’s what the mobile version of Google Buzz does.

“Near me now” and “Explore right here” functionality is baked right into the mobile version of Buzz. That, combined with cell phone GPS capability and Twitter-like posting, is mobile magic.

Plus, Google adds some wicked voodoo. When you launch the mobile Buzz app and touch the “Nearby” button, you’ll see all recent posts near your location, listed in order of proximity.

A button just above the message area lists all the businesses nearby, also listed by proximity. You can choose the restaurant or store you’re at, or choose the “best available location” option. That’s powerful, because GPS is only approximate.

Automatic Glassware | Jesse Stiles “Automatic...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:44:33 -0500

Automatic Glassware | Jesse Stiles

“Automatic Glassware” is an electronic installation work of hundreds of autonomous light and sound generators that collectively produce an evolving field of audiovisual polyrhythms. Inside glass jars a simple circuit fires an LED and actuator at one of three musical intervals. As time passes and batteries slowly die, the individual generators align and drift from their neighboring generators creating semi-random shapes of light and sound that course throughout the installation.

2009
Circuits, LEDs, actuators, glass jars

Law & Order: Delayed Sleep-phase Syndrome Unit

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:15:43 -0500

mcgillicuddy:

brrdee: (via bigjimspecials) happy valentines day! ;)

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:07:54 -0500

brrdee:

(via bigjimspecials)

happy valentines day! ;)

Lighting control that fits in your pocket Luminair is...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:56:21 -0500

Lighting control that fits in your pocket Luminair is revolutionary DMX lighting control software that allows users to wirelessly control lighting fixtures, dimmers, consoles, and media servers all via a Wi-Fi connection. Luminair works by transmitting and receiving DMX data using the Art-Net protocol, so it’s compatible out of the box with lots of existing equipment on the market. It works great for controlling color-mixable LED fixtures, studio lighting, moving lights, and any other DMX enabled equipment. Use Luminair as the ultimate remote focus tool, for advanced architectural lighting, or simply as the centerpiece of your DMX lighting rig. (via Luminair 2.0 - Wireless DMX lighting control for iPhone + iPod touch)

Pixelnode is a plug-in that enables lighting and multimedia...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:32:59 -0500

Pixelnode is a plug-in that enables lighting and multimedia designers to turn Apple’s Quartz Composer into a powerful live media-server, controllable via DMX lighting consoles. Pixelnode uses the Art-Net protocol to give users access to one universe (512 channels) of DMX data directly from a Quartz Composer patch. This makes it instantly compatible with tons of existing hardware and software on the market. What’s Quartz Composer? Quartz Composer is an application for Mac OS X that provides a visual programming environment geared towards live-performance and installations. It’s very deep software which is limited only by an artist’s imagination. Users must download Quartz Composer as a part of the Mac OS X developer kit, which can be done at: http://developer.apple.com Use with Luminair Pixelnode is a perfect visual companion for Luminair, our wireless DMX controller for the iPhone and iPod touch. Within seconds you can have a light show complete with visual elements, all running from the world’s leading multi-touch DMX controller. (via Synthe FX - Pixelnode - DMX input for Quartz Composer + iTunes)

William Kentridge - Johannesburg (1989) (via ead1529)

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:05:32 -0500

William Kentridge - Johannesburg (1989) (via ead1529)

Tahoe-LAFS is a p2p filesystem. You pool your spare hard drive...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:01:29 -0500

Tahoe-LAFS is a p2p filesystem. You pool your spare hard drive space together with that of your friends. This forms a distributed filesystem which endures even if some of your friends’ computers are unreachable. Everything is automatically encrypted, so backing up your files onto the distributed filesystem doesn’t necessarily mean sharing the files with your friends. But, it is easy to share specific files or directories with specific friends. It comes with a command-line interface and a web interface. If you choose, you can allow remote HTTP clients to connect to the web interface. We’ve configured our test grid to do that so that you can take Tahoe-LAFS for a test drive just by clicking here. (via Tahoe-LAFS: a P2P filesystem that lets you use the cloud without trusting it Boing Boing)

Sociotechnical systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:43:10 -0500

Sociotechnical systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Sociotechnical systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Socio-technical systems)

Sociotechnical systems (or STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term also refers to the interaction between society’s complex infrastructures and human behaviour. In this sense, society itself, and most of its substructures, are complex sociotechnical systems. The term sociotechnical systems was coined in the 1960s by Eric Trist and Fred Emery, who were working as consultants at the Tavistock Institute inLondon.

Sociotechnical systems theory is theory about the social aspects of people and society and technical aspects of machines and technology. Sociotechnical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organisation. Sociotechnical theory therefore is about joint optimization, with a shared emphasis on achievement of both excellence in technical performance and quality in people’s work lives. Sociotechnical theory, as distinct from sociotechnical systems, proposes a number of different ways of achieving joint optimisation. They are usually based on designing different kinds of organisation, ones in which the relationships between socio and technical elements lead to the emergence of productivity and wellbeing.

Sociotechnical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization.

(Here is where it get’s interesting…)

Sociotechnical theory is founded on two main principles:

One is that the interaction of social and technical factors creates the conditions for successful (or unsuccessful) organizational performance. This interaction is comprised partly of linear ‘cause and effect’ relationships (the relationships that are normally ‘designed’) and partly from ‘non-linear’, complex, even unpredictable relationships (the good or bad relationships that are often unexpected). Whether designed or not, both types of interaction occur when socio and technical elements are put to work.
The corollary of this, and the second of the two main principles, is that optimisation of each aspect alone (socio or technical) tends to increase not only the quantity of unpredictable, ‘un-designed’ relationships, but those relationships that are injurious to the system’s performance.

FAVORITE FINE ARTIST? Michael Oatman (via Doug Bartow | January...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:32:02 -0500

FAVORITE FINE ARTIST? Michael Oatman (via Doug Bartow | January 2010 Issue | Graphic Design USA)