Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

As opposed to being called a “cougar”—actor Demi Moore, 47, is famously married to 16-years-younger actor Ashton Kutcher, 31—W magazine’s December cover subject, above, says, in the mag’s profile, that “I’d prefer to be called a puma.”

Well, whatever the large cat, it looks like one of ’em just took a bite out of her hip.

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I’m gushing over version 2.0 of Exit Strategy NYC‘s cool, namesake application. It “features a zoomable, scrollable and interactive MTA subway map as well as bus maps for all five boroughs,” but that’s not the coolest part. As Core77 blog explains,

Exit Strategy NYC tells you which part of the subway car you have to board to wind up at any specific point at any station in the system, which seems totally absurd if you don’t live in a city that’s always in a rush, but will undoubtedly have value among those who are always looking to shave a couple seconds off their commuting time.

Look at the picture, above. Do only New Yorkers immediately get the value of this; of not having to figure out the fastest way out of the subway, because it’s all there on your screen? I’m in love. Now, all I need is an iPhone. Exit Strategy NYC, $4.99, at the iPhone App Store.

[via Core77]

Astro Boy, the American CGI feature based on Japanese manga master Osamu Tezuka’s 1951 character, opens today. It features the voices of Freddie Highmore as Astro Boy, with Nicolas Cage, Charlize Theron, Samuel L. Jackson, Kristen Bell, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, Matt Lucas, Bill Nighy, and Donald Sutherland, among others, pulling up the rear.

Cage, who plays scientist Dr. Tenma, the robot’s creator, says “the sadness of the story”—that of a machine who dreams of becoming human—drew him to the movie. For the rest of us, there’s this stunning, double-sided teaser one-sheet, above, dramatically rendering Astro in silhouette, save for his awesomely-powered heart. $25, Movieposter.com.

Calicut, India-based, MIT-educated industrial designer Vipin George takes agricultural automotion seriously. That’s why, for a recent style exercise, he created the COSMICtrac, “a tractor for the international market for the future.”

As reviewed on YankoDesign, COSMICtrac’s features include:

a single sheet hood. Fibre-reinforced plastic head light housings – which, by the way, are housed rather than mounted, which is a fabulous idea because tractor lights that are mounted break off basically every five minutes.

Projected grill up front, exposed engine parts, partly covered fender for driver safety. The future is the basic super-simplification of all machines based on the knowledge we’ve gleaned from the past few decades of trial and error.

Yee-haw!

[via yankodesign.com]

When 19-year-old computer geek Shawn Fanning created and released Napster, his internet file-sharing application, 10 years ago, he had no idea that his little experiment would completely overturn the massive, multi-billion music business. He just wanted a way to share digital music with friends. But what started as an experiment by a bored college student quickly became the loose bolt that would yank the industry from its rapidly rotating axle.

Fanning and Napster were quickly lambasted by many, hailed as heroes by many more. But their story is only a small part of what Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot, in his new book, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, above, calls “the laptop generation”:

An uprising led by bands and fans networking on the Internet. Ripped tells the story of how the laptop generation created a new grassroots music industry, with the fans and bands rather than the corporations in charge.

Those businesses fell apart not only because the technology made change irresistible, but also because, for years, the business refused to come to grips with what was happening to their field. That’s the subject of Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper‘s text, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, above middle. In Knopper’s opinion,

after the incredible wealth and excess of the ’80s and ’90s, Sony,
Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall
through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic
advances in technology.

Greg Kot and Steve Knopper are guests today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, October 2, at 2 pm ET.

But they’re talking about how we got here. What should an artist do, in today’s realm, to manage a career in the digital age? Attorney Steve Gordon‘s book, The Future of the Music Business: How to Succeed with the New Digital Technologies, above top, is designed as a guide for the artist / entrepreneur who wants to take control of their career. It

provides a legal and business roadmap to artists, music industry professionals, entrepreneurs and attorneys. It focuses on the rules pertaining to the music business and the new digital music industry, how artists and entrepreneurs can use the new technologies to succeed, new business models, plus interviews with artists and entrepreneurs who are inventing the future of the music business.

You can hear Kot’s, Knopper’s, and Gordon’s ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

In the book, From Control to Design: Parametric / Algorithmic Architecture, thinkers and practitioners look at the way today’s most aggressive and innovative firms are using computation to make the art of creating space a wholly new and radical venture.

This 26-foot-high, 69-foot-long, 17-ton aluminum sculpture, above, “The Morning Line,” by artist Matthew Ritchie, architects Aranda/Lasch and civil engineers Arup AGU, typifies the kinds of complex structures, and constructions, with which creatives are now playing. As the book reasons, the types of innovation possible are only increasing exponentially.

If the first generation of digital modeling programs allowed designers to conceive new forms and processes, a new breed of digital techniques is being discussed to control and realize these forms. How are these techniques affecting architectural practice and what potentials do they offer?

Architect Irene Hwang, one of From Control to Design‘s editors, is the guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, August 28, at 2 pm ET.

You can hear her ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

Familiar landmarks within New York City’s largest borough dominate this image, above. The spectacularly detailed view was shot by NASA’s EO-1 (Earth Observatory) satellite, as it hovered over 438 miles above the nation’s most populated city, on September 12, 2001.

See Orlando, the one in the middle, above? He’s smiling, but, like a lot of Black people, deep down inside, he’s tired of being ignored. Passed over for promotions. Always asked to work on his company’s “ethnic marketing” campaigns.

I mean, look at him: He’s the oldest guy in his unit, because everybody who got hired when he came on has moved up. Meanwhile, Jenny, right, is team leader, and in line for the division president position. Ignore the Asian guy!

Grrrrrrrrrrr. It’s enough to infuriate a person.

Or, at least, it was. But that was before we, at Microsoft, introduced The Microsoft Advantage, courtesy of our most advanced software to-date: Windows RaceChange Suite Express for Vista.

With a few quick taps on his laptop, Orlando, above, becomes “Bob,” below.

WOW! Look at him now! Wouldn’t you like that guy running North American sales? Notice the respect, the vitality! That’s the kind of man that leads men…and Jenny to the bedroom!

Plus, he speaks Polish!

Microsoft Windows RaceChange Suite Express for Vista: And, remember: At Microsoft, race isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.

[via @LenaWest, CNET News]

For years, conceptual designer Syd Mead has been the man to whom companies go when they need to advance an audacious vision of the impending future.

Sydney Jay Mead was born in 1933, in Saint Paul, MN, to a Baptist minister and his wife. After graduating from the Art Center in Los Angeles in 1959, he worked at Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Center in Dearborn, MI for two years. He then spent part of the next decade rendering now legendary concept illustration for U.S. Steel, above. “He painted,” one Mead fan site notes, “using a slick, detailed method that made the future seem fresh, clean, and thrilling.” He started Syd Mead, Inc. in 1970.

Soon, Hollywood came calling with movies that required his ultra-hard, visually authentic and tactile designs. (Mead lists his favorite metal as “chrome,” and his favorite color is, gulp, “Cherenkov radiation blue.”) His indelible technological notions were then emblazoned on sci-fi like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Aliens, and Tron. (Indeed, some would argue that his US Steel snow walker, above right, obviously influenced another one in a galaxy far, far away, below right.)

But it was Blade Runner, right, Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic, on which Mead’s dystopic gigalopolis, both below right, most sears every frame. “In essence,” says author Paul Sammon (Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner), “what you’re seeing in many shots are almost three-dimensional representations of Syd Mead’s art.”

Sammon, Mead, director Steven Lisberger (Tron) and other industry vets testify in director Joaquin Montalvan’s 2005 documentary, Visual Futurist: The Art & Life of Syd Mead. The film tells Mead’s story from his own perspective, as well as from that of the people with whom he’s worked. It’s a rich document about a little-known man, but one whose whose ideas are deeply and widely embedded in American popular culture.

Joaquin Montalvan is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, August 21, at 2 pm ET.

But first we’ll speak to Jason Del Gandio, author of Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for 21st Century Activist, a guide for the ultra-political on how to effectively communicate. “Here’s the underlying logic” of his book, Del Gandio says:

• Change the rhetoric and you change the communication.

• Change the communication and you change the experience.

• Change the experience and you change a person’s orientation to the world.

• Change that orientation and you create conditions for profound social change.

You can hear Jason Del Gandio’s and Joaquin Montalvan’s ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

Software, arguably, rules the world. It’s the basis of computing in all forms, from your microwave oven to your cell phone to the internet. Yet, it is invisible, ethereal, hard to understand, and even harder to create well.

But software can be made expertly, with great results, when one puts together and manages a great team. But how does one do that?

In his new book, Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers, Louis Testa talks about how making great software is, really, a task of managing and choosing good people, a needed skill in any realm.

Louis Testa the guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, July 17th, at 2 pm ET.

You can hear his ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.