Horizonless Maps

Here's a very fun and disorienting way to look at maps (and reality), from London-based BERG:

"Here & There is a project by BERG exploring speculative projections of dense cities. These maps of Manhattan look uptown from 3rd and 7th, and downtown from 3rd and 35th. They're intended to be seen at those same places, putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it where she stands, both looking down and looking forward."

Reminds me of a brief snapshot from the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie, Inception:

(images courtesy of BERG and Geektyrant)

Batman + Shark + Lightsaber = Best Tattoo Ever

No explanation needed.

Image by Andrew Zubko.

DROWN IN THE RIVER LIFFEY

To celebrate this joyous, sloppy holiday, here is a short story I wrote recently that takes place in Dublin, Ireland entitled "DROWN IN THE RIVER LIFFEY." If you read my story "CONCUSSIONS," this involves the same character, Jonas.

Read DROWN IN THE RIVER LIFFEY! Tell me what you think.

(photo courtesy of Andrew Tyson Shaffner)

Scientists Let Me Spot Solar Storms, Dooms Us All

(image courtesy of Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and NASA)

This is so cool. The website Solar Storm Watch asks for anyone's help to spot approaching solar storms. You just have to go through some nifty training that takes five minutes so you can interpret the pretty pictures sent from satellites STEREO Ahead and STEREO Behind. See below:

The image on the left from STEREO Behind is showing an actual solar storm (look at the round bulbous shape of fire), while STEREO Ahead's got nothin'.

I hope they're fact checking though. Because who knows if I actually spotted a solar storm or just something I thought was pretty.

Superheroes in Real Life

(photo courtesy of Luke Tchalenko from Telegraph UK)

Best Game of Tetris Ever

From Freebord.

Google Discovers "Bicycle Routes"

In an astonishing announcement, the Google Reality Matrix has added yet another previously unknown phenomenon to the known world: “Bicycle Routes.”

“Bicycle Routes” are apparently specified roads, paths, or other specially designated routes to travel via a two-wheeled, non-motorized vehicle called a “bicycle” or “velocipede” or “bike” for short. According to Wikipedia, “bicycles were introduced in the 19th Century,” though I couldn’t find a map of the 19th Century on Google Maps to find proof of such (it might not have been fully mapped yet).

Nevertheless, I can’t wait to try this new form of vehicle and its designated route to travel upon. It looks like a middle-ground between walking and driving, though the routes seem as limited as public transportation. It will be way easier to find my way around such cities as San Francisco, Portland, Minneapolis, New York, Washington DC, and more!

Hoorah for the Google Reality Matrix for this discovery, and their continuing efforts to enlighten and map all of human-kind!

Jason Epstein and the Future of Publishing

(image courtesy of We Made This)

Jason Epstein had an article in The New York Times Book Review yesterday titled "Publishing: The Revolutionary Future." Now, normally when I share an article of such a topic by a member of the New York publishing fraternity I ridicule their ideas and call them old geezers. Not this time. I actually think Epstein shares a very level-headed view of the past, present, and future of publishing and media in general. He talks about Gutenberg, printing and backlist shifts in the 1980s and 1990s, of the current expansion of e-books, protections for authors, and of course offers his predictions for the future (though he states them as if he were a soothsayer).

Pretty cool stuff, even if he is an old geezer...

"With the earth trembling beneath them, it is no wonder that publishers with one foot in the crumbling past and the other seeking solid ground in an uncertain future hesitate to seize the opportunity that digitization offers them to restore, expand, and promote their backlists to a decentralized, worldwide marketplace. New technologies, however, do not await permission. They are, to use Schumpeter's overused term, disruptive, as nonnegotiable as earthquakes."

And later...

"The huge, worldwide market for digital content, however, is not a fantasy. It will be very large, very diverse, and very surprising: its cultural impact cannot be imagined. E-books will be a significant factor in this uncertain future, but actual books printed and bound will continue to be the irreplaceable repository of our collective wisdom."

And just for funsies, here's a short clip from a BBC documentary featuring Stephen Fry about the Gutenberg Press:

Prometheus, Caprica, Facebook & Me

What happens to your Facebook profile when you die? If I’ve understood Caprica correctly, then it gets downloaded into a giant robot’s brain.

Caprica is a prequel series to Battlestar Galactica (that show with the sexy robots at war with humanity), which is supposed explain how those sexy robots came to be. In the first episode, Zoey, the daughter of the inventor of the internet, gets killed in a terrorist attack and her dad misses her so much he finds her online avatar (her conscious Facebook profile), and installs it into a giant warrior robot he’s building for the government.

Horrifying, isn’t it? The idea that the information we leave of ourselves on the internet could be rolled together like a ball of yarn to form a working consciousness, and then used to animate an abominable being like Frankenstein’s monster.

But it’s almost believable. After all, social networks make it entirely possible to keep track of friends, family, and perfect strangers down to the excruciatingly shameful and mundane daily details. FOR EXAMPLE, I’ve been made aware of all the disgustingly private details of what giving birth is like because a friend of mine just had a baby this week (SHE POSTED HOURLY UPDATES AND LEFT NOTHING OUT, SHUDDER).

Google, Amazon, and Facebook already have sophisticated algorithms to take your personal information and show you individualized advertisements. How far of a leap will it be to take that same information and create a replication of your consciousness and put it in a robot? And since the Caprica/Battlestar universe is kind of a parable for our own, this suggests that the perversion of intelligent life rooted from taking our perverted internet personalities and creating a new race out of them will kill us all.

Well, I’m sure as long as the robots are sexy no one will actually mind. Amen.

Oh, and I want their electronic paper. Like right now. Now.

(graphic by me, with images courtesy of SyFy Channel and Facebook)

7th Annual Smithsonian Photo Contest

I missed out on entering this contest so I'll have to wait for next year, but here are a just a few of the incredible finalists for the 7th Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest. Click here to see all of the finalists and vote for your favorite.

(all photos courtesy of smithsonianmag.com)

I'm In The Motherboard

Sometime last year Motherboard.tv was launched by VBS.tv, the internet video station of Vice Magazine. It is "an online video network and community focused on the exploration of the nature and culture of technology, as viewed through the lenses of curated editorial content, community, and dialogue."

Anyway, I joined the Motherboard.tv community and dialogue last month. Hell, it seems right up my alley and covers many of the same topics I cover on this blog. I've only made a few posts so far, mainly of recycled material I've already posted on this blog. But it's kind of fun for me to participate in something that is almost a social network/community blog for people interested in new media such as myself.

Plus, I like Vice, particularly VBS.tv (the interface they set up to make it seem like its own television channel is very similar to what I had in mind when I designed NinjaPancakes.com).

Although all those damn American Apparel ads are really fucking annoying. And they also are too often twisted perverts.

Anyways, check out my Motherboard profile.

Digital Magazines Are Cool Again

This is a concept video for the Mag+ project, a nifty device and interface that shows a fun way to read digital magazines. Looks like finger-scrolling in a way that appears similar to the swiping thingy on iPhones/iTouches/iPads, and also like Google’s Fast Flip. Pretty neat, eh?

I'll be honest, I hadn't been too impressed by the prospect of reading digital magazines on tablets or any of Apple's little iPhones. The demo for the iPad was pretty boring, I got claustrophobic trying it on the iPhone, and other tablets just feed what you get from the magazine's actual webpage. The only aspect I remotely like is Google's Fast Flip dealy. I actually enjoy perusing the news much better that way. Much more visual, fun, and you get to preview the actual layout of each source. Much more like going through an actual newspaper.

This Mag+ dealy looks a lot more fun though, even though it is conceptually so close to what the iPad is supposed to give. I know it's just a concept video, but this looks a lot more interactive and fluid and textural, much like I want digital magazines and tablets to eventually be-- just like holding a piece of paper. Kind of as demonstrated in the new show Caprica this:

By the way, that new show Caprica is awesome. You should watch it.