Temple St Sky July 31, 2006
Temple and Grand looking up. Clouds and Sky. Quadtych 
E-volver
E-volver is a software that invites an “image-breeding-machine” and a human “gardener” to collaborate together. While the machine has no notion of the aesthetic qualities of the evolved images, the human can barely understand what internal processes are taking place.
It all begins with a an incoherent tangle of moving lines and points and colored planes, and on the basis of the user’s personal preferences, this gradually evolves into a more coherent image.
The software generates artificial ‘organisms’ measuring one pixel. Each ‘organism’ is made up of genes that determine how the organism will ‘behave’ on the monitor. The genes read the properties of the surrounding pixels and, based on what they find, tell the organism what to do and where to move next.
Each image is like a garden in which newly-cultivated plants are left to their own devices. The way images look is not only a result of the collective behavior of the organisms, but also the result of the users. By using touching the screen, visitors can influence the visual patterns displayed on the monitors. They can deactivate one of the four pixel gardens. Voting out the least exciting images devalues those particular genes and upgrades the genes of the three surviving pixel gardens. In other words a group of organisms evolves that contains properties that generate the most pleasing collective image. That is, until the computer “resets’’, which happens when a predetermined number of votes has been cast. And then the whole process begins again.
E-volver monitors have been installed at the Leiden University Medical Center (NL). The work echoes the research that takes place in the LUMC. Whereas the scientists are mainly focused on biochemistry, genetics and the evolution of biological life, the installation shows how autonomous processes such as growth and evolution, which can maybe be understood theoretically but which are never directly perceptible in daily life, can be perceptible on a sensory level.
A work by Erwin Driessens & Maria Verstappen, of Tickle Salon the fame.
Via re-qualia.
Inform.com’s Latest Offering
I’ve gone back and forth on Inform.com in the past (we also covered them here). They are a massively funded New York startup that launched an inferior news product late last year. Since then, they’ve made real efforts to shake things up. Their newest product, Inform Publisher Services, is aimed at big web publishers, and is designed to help them increase page views by adding relevant links to other, hopefully related, content in their archives.
The new service automatically creates links in existing articles, which link to a results page containing relevant content from the site as well as from the web, including blogs and audio/video content. It’s currently live on NewsOK.com, an Oklahoma newspaper site. To see it in action, see this article and click on one of the links within the text. I clicked on “State Department” in the second paragraph, which brought up this results page.
Frankly, I didn’t see a lot of relevant content.
Inform Publisher Services is entirely automated, and I’m sure they’ll tweak the algorithm over time to make it better. But with all the new links in the articles, it seems that readers will quickly tire of seeing a results page with barely-related content put in front of them.
Eric Schonfeld at Business 2.0 wrote a very long post on the new product tonight, suggesting that this will give pubishers the edge they need to compete with Digg and Google in the war for reader attention. I don’t see the logical connection that he sees, but the company has convinced six partners to launch with this soon: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, The New York Sun, NewsOK.com (Web site for The Oklahoman newspaper and News9, KWTV CBS Affiliate), The Huffington Post, The Deal LLC, and NameMedia. If Inform does a good job of creating more page views for these companies, they’ll keep this business and add more partners over time.
See our posts on Blogburst, another company offering services to media publishers. In the case of Blogburst, they are offering to syndicate vetted blog content to these sites at a much cheaper price than they pay for other content.
In memoriam: Bill Goggins of Wired Magazine
Xeni Jardin: Paul Boutin writes,
Bill Goggins, who died unexpectedly while running the San Francisco Marathon Sunday, was Wired”s man-behind-the-curtain for years until he recently moved on. Bill”s meticulous yet hilarious verbal skills, coupled with a work ethic rarely seen outside New England milltowns, quietly improved most of Wired”s feature stories and countless others in the late 90″s and early 00″s. Bill had an exceptional ability to take a good story and make it better—clearer, catchier, more consistent—usually by changing only a few words, sometimes by making both editor and writer go back and re-examine their basic premises. Whenever people comment on my ability to write clearly, I know Bill had a lot to do with it.
Case in point: I once spent weeks crafting a short piece on Ray Kurzweil that concluded with this paragraph.
Skeptics may say he”s flown off the charts himself, but Kurzweil is sure they”ll live to regret it. “The really surprising thing to me is how many Nobel Prize winners haven”t internalized the implications of the exponential rate of increase in the rate of knowledge itself,” he says. “It”s easy to explain these things in the language of mathematics. But to really understand them, you almost need to resort to religious terms.”Bill read it and tacked on one more word:
Amen.But I”ll remember Bill most for his dry yet pointed wit around the office. When Chris Anderson”s first Wired cover, “Is Japan Still the Future?” was punched up by Condé Nast”s editorial director to “Japan Rocks!” Bill protested by posting a note above his desk in the same font: “If Japan”s a-rockin”, don”t come a-knockin”.”
Link to Paul”s post. Image: Bill Goggins, with Paul”s wife Christina Noren, at a party in 2004. Here is an article about the marathon today, with details on the circumstances surrounding Goggins” death. He was a kind man and a masterful editor.
Original Article syndicated via RSS from Boing Boing
Red Moto FONE
Announced last week, the Motorola FONE promises to bring wireless telephony to the rest of the world. Beyond its emerging market focus the 9mm thick, seemingly simple device, will no doubt have a place in the hands of veteran wireless users as well. It’s small and sexy, but made with cheap parts so it will be easy for anyone to get one. No one has seen screenshots of the interface yet, but I expect it to be rather simple. I did just find this picture of the FONE in red, a more stylish version of the simple black original. Expected availability is by this holiday season.
TAGS: Devices, Mobile Phones, Motorola,
Play Ajax Texas Holdem Poker at gpokr
If you liked Battleship in Ajax, you’ll love this. Toronto, Canada based gpokr is a multiplayer no limit Texas Holdem game developed with Ajax technologies. The site, which was created by Ryan Dewsbury, also has real time chat among all players in a game. The site does not use real money, and Ryan says he has no plans to change that.
gpokr was written with Java, and uses the Google Web Toolkit for its client-side Ajax (the toolkit lessens the burden of building client-side javascript by interpreting server-side java into javascript)
Also check out Mark Roth’s Ajax hangman game, which was also created using the Google Web Toolkit. Both are discussed on the Web Toolkit blog, here.
Carson Potter Fall Collection
If you found yourself flipping through Elle this month while waiting in line at the grocery store or while doing some other mundane task, you may have come across the small feature on Carson Potter. Sariah Carson and Jaylin Potter (Parsons survivors by the way) are based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Their work plays beatifully against the silhouette with exquisite attention to detail. While evocative of classic sentiments of femininity, it drops the puritan sense of modesty with its rich decadent textures. Carson Potter’s fall collection will be available by mid September in a few select stores; Barneys Japan, Creature of Comforts (LA), Bark (NYC), Bird (NYC), and DV (LES) - the official site is a bit lacking, so I dug up this article about it on Refinery 29 from back in January. (~_^)
Game biz trade show E3 to wither and/or die?
Xeni Jardin:
Rumors abound that the annual gaming industry convention E3 may be severely cut back next year — or canceled entirely — due to decisions by some top sponsors to focus funds on smaller, brand-focused events. Link, and previous BB posts about E3.
Original Article syndicated via RSS from Boing Boing
Hello Kitty Darth Vader costume
Cory Doctorow: 
I don”t know anything for sure about this image of a Hello Kitty-themed Darth Vader outfit (it”s been suggested that it came from the San Diego Comic Con), though, honestly, what is there to say that the photo doesn”t say for itself? JPEG Link (Thanks, Patrick!)
Original Article syndicated via RSS from Boing Boing
Linux Thinkpads can be controlled by knocking on them
Cory Doctorow: There”s a utility for Thinkpads running GNU/Linux that lets you execute commands by physically knocking on the machine. This registers as activity on the accelerometer built into the laptop (used to park the hard-drive heads in the even of a fall) and is translated into commands within the OS.
For the first time, you can hit your computer and get a meaningful response! Using Linux and the Hard Drive Active Protection System (HDAPS) kernel drivers, you can access the embedded accelerometers on Lenovo (formerly IBM) ThinkPads, then process the accelerometer data to read specific sequences of “knocking” events — literally rapping on the laptop case with your knuckles — and run commands based on those knocks. Double tap to lock the screen, and knock in your secret code to unlock. Tap the display lid once to move your mp3 player to the next track. The possibilities are endless.
Original Article syndicated via RSS from Boing Boing | older posts »