Wednesday, August 18. 2010
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by Patrick James
While reading Wired's recent feature, "The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet," Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza took issue with the following infographic, which illustrates the claim that the web is dead based on the total proportion of internet traffic instead of total overall use.
If you went with total useage, the graph might look like this:
"In fact," Beschizza writes, "between 1995 and 2006, the total amount of web traffic went from about 10 terabytes a month to 1,000,000 terabytes (or 1 exabyte). According to Cisco, the same source Wired used for its projections, total internet traffic rose then from about 1 exabyte to 7 exabytes between 2005 and 2010."
Now, using actual total traffic as the vertical axis, Beschizza reimagines the graph like this:
Does that look like "death" to you?
Personal comment:
Besides the point about web's death (we are speaking here about the "death" of a web of pages, but the increase in the spread of Internet usage) that was made by Wired as an editorial ad. and (apparently rightly) disputed here by Rob Beschizza, it is also interesting to see how far an information graphic can deceive its readers depending on what value you put on which axis...
It's an obvious point, I know... but nonetheless what we do with data and how we visuaklie it are becoming so important nowadays that we have to be really aware of that and don't take any fancy data graph for granted.
Monday, August 16. 2010
Via Mashable
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by Brenna Ehrlich
Ayn Rand is getting some pretty heavy endorsement via GPS of late, as one man — Nick Newcomen — recently drove 12,328 miles across 30 American states to scrawl “Read Ayn Rand” via GPS data inputted into Google Earth.
Newcomen — who explained to Wired that he undertook this mission simply because he is a Rand fan — took more than 30 days to execute this task, using a GPS logger (Qstarz BT-Q1000X) to create the letters. He started in Marshall, Texas, where he began writing out “Rand,” and then drove on (turning off the GPS whilst not writing) until the entire, “Reading Is Fundamental” sentiment was complete.
You can check out more info on the site World’s Biggest Writing, which also features David Lynchian videos of locations Newcomen visited, most ending with a shot of his almost expressionless face (see below).
Although we understand that Newcomen is passionate about the famed Atlas Shrugged author (we’re all groupies of someone, amirite?) we can’t help but wonder what Rand herself would have thought of the stunt. After all, part of Objectivism, a philosophical system she developed, states: “Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.”
To that end, perhaps Newcomen should have scrawled his own name across the States — but, you know, whatever floats your fountainhead…
Personal comment:
If it happens to be true, and it looks like, we just found yet another crazy (gps) person... Welcome Nick Newcomen!
Wednesday, August 11. 2010
Via NextNature
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At Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station visitors can now select beverages from a 47-inch touch panel.
An embedded camera will recognize your gender and age, allowing the machine to recommend a beverage suitable to whatever stereotype is attached to your particular circumstances. It will store your purchasing history too, so you can be freaked out by tailored ads every time you use it. 500 more of these units are planned to be installed in and around Tokyo over the next two years, with operating company JR East expecting them to tally up 30 percent more sales than their analog brethren. Via engadget.com
Smart vending machines in the streets show that Big Brother is being naturally accepted in a pixel consuming society.
Tuesday, August 10. 2010
Personal comment:
Quite active in the field of architecture & interaction design, environment design, Studio Roosegaarde makes a try in the field of fashion design with this interactive garment.
Monday, August 09. 2010
Via Mammoth
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Through Brian Finoki, I ran into the game-world “photography” of Robert Overweg (“Facade 2″ pictured above), who hunts the worlds of video games not to run up a body count, but for architectural fragments and broken landscapes, moments where the rough edges of programmed rules find visual expression. I recommend “Glitches” and “The end of the virtual world”, in particular.
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