the state I'm living in

teachingliteracy:

Evolution, not extinction

(via fuckyeahbookarts)

(via Digital DIY Project: Electronic Bookplates | Design*Sponge)

“Walk around New York City long enough, and you’ll likely encounter an abandoned pay phone kiosk. Encountering this kiosk will likely make you a little bit sad, and that will likely be because the kiosk will have been not so much abandoned as abused: its phone removed, its exterior surfaces covered in grime and/or graffiti, its interior surfaces covered in grime and gum. This will possibly strike you as an undignified way for a thing to meet its demise, even if that thing is a piece of increasingly obsolete technology. On behalf of abandoned kiosks everywhere, then: good news. New York City is going to be converting a group of them into wifi hotspots. YES. The connectivity will be time-unlimited, free to users, and free of ads — at least for the pilot project. And it’ll offer a wireless range of up to 200 feet. New York’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications is providing the service through a partnership with Titan, the city’s largest payphone provider, and Van Wagner Communications” (via Take Heart, Pay Phones: When You Die, You Become WiFi - Megan Garber - The Atlantic).

“The web today is a growing universe of interlinked web pages and web apps, teeming with videos, photos, and interactive content. What the average user doesn’t see is the interplay of web technologies and browsers that makes all this possible” (via The Evolution of the Web | Visual.ly).

“Monet’s Water Lilies collection is one of the few things in the universe that’s somehow unflappable in the face of extreme popularity. There’s some inherent beauty going on that you can’t be snobby about, one that’s basically exempt from parody (I’ve seen the Mona Lisa with a moustache more times than I can count, but I’ve never seen someone mock a Monet). Maybe that’s why NYBG in Bloom, a new, free iPhone app, is so fun. A collaboration of the New York Botanical Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and multimedia design firm Local Projects, it’s a virtual walkthrough of the Garden’s current reproduction of Monet’s famous Garden at Giverny.” (via A Free App For Exploring The Gardens That Inspired Monet’s Masterpiece | Co.Design: business innovation design)

“‘etcher’ is an ‘etch a sketch® for the iPad’ developed by california-based peripheral and app design company ari krupnik & associates. the system comprises a special case for the iPad, as well as an ‘etch a sketch®’ application. featuring a closing door for complete enclosure, the case is modeled after the original childhood toy, featuring two knobs that control the appearance of lines onscreen. also like the original, the screen erases itself when shaken. because of the digital nature of the images, however, ‘etcher’ also includes saving and sharing functionality for drawings, including posting the files instantly to facebook or flickr. it also automatically records timelapses of drawings created, offering users the option of saving or uploading this video.” (via etcher: etch-a-sketch for iPad)

Our photos are filled with gobs of metadata, but it’s mostly useless stuff to anyone but pro photographers. It identifies the camera the photo was taken on and all of its settings, but it can’t tell us anything else. Was it raining in the photo? Was it taken on the beach? This is all mineable data for search engines that it’s up to us to categorize. The Descriptive Camera is a project by Matt Richardson, and it’s essentially a webcam glued to a printer and some additional processing equipment. But when it takes a photo, rather than printing an image, it prints out text descriptions, such as: “Looks like a cupboard that is ugly and old. having some plates on it with a lamp attached to it.” (via Camera Describes Pictures Instead Of Taking Them, Using Crowdsourcing | Co.Design: business innovation design)