Business Week's idea of the *new wonders of the world.

"Towards the end of 2005—a year in which a new skyscraper earned the title of tallest in the world and construction in China continued at a scale that makes the Pyramids look like ant-hills—we were inspired to come up with a list of new wonders of the world. What, we asked, raises a building from mere architecture to a marvel of innovation?"

Features a picture gallery (nice). The looker pictured here is the Fiera Milano complex:

"The unique feature of the complex is an undulating glass-and-steel canopy that stretches for 1,300 meters, connecting the myriad buildings and funneling light into the spaces below. The complex spatial geometry of this roof structure forced the engineers to develop an irregular grid system: the volcano-like protuberance near the entrance is formed by a square mesh, the
free-formed portion of the canopy is formed by rhombic meshes, and some triangular meshes are used in the areas of double curvature. The engineers put the design through wind-tunnel tests to ensure that it would handle the loads."

Er, no it's a bread basket.

No, really. It's a bread box that prevents mold with ultraviolet light.

Only it's secondary purpose is a hatching ground for violet aliens who will one day rule earth by overexposing mankind to carbs. (Atkins to the rescue!) But that theory hasn't been approved by the FDA, and NASA refuses to confirm sightings in Iowa.

link

Intro, the world's first self-playing violin.

Like an old fashioned player piano, the Virtuoso is a mechanized musical revolution that goes for $17,500. It debuts with a orchestra in the video here.

The designer is a "retired president of a military technology company and a former NASA administrator."

(moping!)
"Dude!" I was just telling a friend in a cafe last weekend this should exist! Damn laziness. For me, the idea came from the manual power on the emergency radio/light devices and the MIT $100 laptops.

(reality!)
Who cares who did it (unless you lost a cut), this is great!

NYT story

The best thing since Gloria Steinem for Women's Lib. And let us say, it's the best thing since sliced bread, in that 1950s Home&Garden sort of way.

Why, it's the all-in-one WashDryIron! Made by a lad just trying to pass his classes in London. Its steam press is expected to save about 10 days of ironing work a year. With up to 16 pieces in at a time, it washes, dries and irons in separate compartments--so that delicates and muddy socks can be put in at once.
link

Also, the Body Box does as the usual tricks--but from your remote. Plus it sorts clothes by fabric type. link

The clever system of the body box tags individual clothing in order of fabric type and collects, separates and cleans the clothes accordingly and it can be programmed by both internet and an 18 inch touch panel screen. And, the body box is not just all about your laundry, it also features the luxury of sink, shower and steam bath cabinlink

(One thing, I would guess many daydreamers have thought of this before. But, why now? The technology specifications aren't released, I bet it's a combination of a democratization (though still specialized) in technological knowledge and prices for industrial materials and niche production dribbling down. Or is it just that the consumer demand has become both specialized and globally integrated enough to support the (copyrighted, but still proverbial) long tail here?)

what I would do if I were in La this weekend....

Little Tokyo's two-day outdoor festival may celebrate the delicious variety of soy protein, but there's nothing spongy about it. In addition to a range of tofu-based dishes, the event features performances by Blackalicious, Ill Again, and the Gaslamp Killer, plus Iron Chef battles, a beer and sake garden, and an anime marathon. All proceeds benefit the Little Tokyo Service Center's community outreach programs — not to mention your soul and stomach.

(but still thank god i'm not in LA, no tofu mountain is worth it)
link

Art, soothing natural greenery, clean air indoors. (luckily the price tag is in German)

Friends and I actually fantisized about this when we were kids--along with a room that was a pool with an island bed in the middle.

But now, all grown, my mind asks: what would happen if fruit flies made it home? What would an ant colony look like hanging on the wall? --perhaps the other side should be glass, facing the bathroom. The possibilities are endless. Let's add flowers!

Made with hydroponics by Indoor Landscaping

Three posts earlier, an autistic savant Londoner recreated the eternal city from instant memory. This is about another savant Londoner (there are only 50 in the world)but very different. Unlike every other known autistic savant, Daniel Tammet is able to explain how his perceptions and how his mind works--giving researchers unique insights into his disease and extraordinary abilities.

Though the math genius says words are his second language, he's just written a book about himself. Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Asperger's and An Extraordinary Mind.

great article

To the geeks who smirk when they see the phrase 'web 2.0' used more than it's understood--- this is hilarious. It is still hilarious to me after several months and multiple viewings. An instance where lol is verbatim.

A clear inflatable umbrella. It doesn't hurt to bump into and inflates with a bicycle pump located inside the handle.

One thing though, isn't the mushroom like top more prone to tipping raindrops onto your shoulder if it pivots from the handlebar?

No wait--because it's clear, you're supposed to wear it around your head and look through it!

By turning the handle backwards, the umbrella is deflated. The three high-output LEDs illuminate decorative markings on the vinyl make it more charming.
link

A savant Londoner flies over Rome for 30/45 min. then spends three days drawing Rome in amazing precision in a large panorama.

Stephen Wilshire

The 10 strangest statues.

link

An office rennovation in carboard, reverse-prankster revenge...

...and an upside-down dorm-room at Light Side Up...

Invisible Dynamics, a new Exploratorium project, explores the SF BayArea with (high and low tech) infosthetics.

One of the exhibits is Cabspotting, an online system that tracks and records the movements of Yellow Cabs throughout the Bay Area with GPS.

At top, the dynamic yellow lines represent real-time cab movements through the city. Below is a velocity visualization, where red indicates high speed rides and white bunches display traffic jams.

Exploratorium's Invisible Dynamics

Okay, it is but not human. It's this site's tag structure.

The brightness of the lines is determined by the importance of the tags in terms of structure.

Basically a semantically rich site will appear brighter than one with messy old-style code.

You can also determine the richness of text on a site. A site the focuses on (text) content is one where the DNA patterns is large (filling many containers), but contains a lot of empty spaces between the lines (empty space is the individual words).

try it, via Infosthetics, Another tag-structure visualization

'From life comes art.' Personal fingerprints and DNA as wall-covering.

Tempted to file this under strange but true. In reality, it could be the perfect gift for a biology grad student, crime scene detective, or medical researcher. ---or an ironic sundry for that ex-cat-burglar friend who had his/her fingerprints removed by plastic surgeons before turning a leaf in the penitentiary.

DNA11

At nighttime projections from moving cars are shone on the buildings in the industrial/abandoned part of town. Each car projects a video of a wild animal. The animal’s movements are programmed to correspond to the speed of the car: as the car moves, the animal runs along it, as the car stops, the animal stops also. Aggressive driving is reflected in the aggressive behavior of the animal. The animals are avatars of the drivers, who, enclosed in their bubble of safety, are separated from the stark and dangerous world of urban reality, as being in a different universe. The projections both expose the starkness of the urban landscape, and transform it into a world of dark fantasy.

Roaming in the Interactive City.

The Filmmaking Robot

The eyes consist of a small computer with a camera and wifi card mounted upon the front of a public bus collecting video. When an open wireless connection is traversed, the video is uploaded to the body.

For about 12 hours a day the robot dwells on its memories, recalling well liked or pertinent imagery, and attempting to connect it through a sequence of frames, which is shown as video. Each frame is analyzed to give 20 numbers summarizing its qualities, and these numbers are treated as coordinates in a 20 dimensional space. Proximity in this space is used to determine similarity for the purposes of creating a video sequence.

These numbers are also feed to neural networks which have been trained to like selections of fine art and images identified as well-composed by human subjects, and the response of these networks determines whether the robot likes an image. At the end of the day, it looks over its production, and picks out a few minutes to release as a finished film.

Find it filming you in the Interactive City.

99 Red Balloons
...is a live action street game of collective surveillance
...proposes an alternate story, an oppositional one, performed through play in public space.
...[is] a mass of 99 red helium balloons sent up, up into the sky above Cesar Chavez Plaza and surrounding sites to take over surveillance of the city.
--is each a balloon 5 feet in diameter when inflated, outfitted with a small, hidden wireless camera, and connected to a 60 feet tether, held and manipulated by players during the game to control the height and position of the balloon.

The city becomes interactive, lively, visible, imagined, red, and passionate!

One can hunt forever looking for jems. Today the mine comes to you... Interactive City!!!

Forget origami, check out these sculptures in paper.

If you know how to do this, send instructions post-haste and help save a scratch-paper forest.

by Richard Sweeney, Flickr

Caught in a cobweb, across a traffic sign, lost in the clouds, divided in three, stretched across a canyon, missing it’s middle, lost in a boat’s spray, glowing in the dark ---some odd rainbows.

Ms. R. Brite strikes again. The Rainbow Gallery.

...a home that doesn't just use "green" design but is itself a living ecosystem...
The basic framework of the house would be created using a gardening method known as pleaching, in which young trees are woven together into a shape such as an archway, lattice, or screen and then encouraged to maintain that form over the years.
As the framework matured -- which might take a few years in tropical climates and several decades in more temperate locations -- the home grower would weave a dense layer of protective vines onto the exterior walls. Any gaps could be filled in with soil and growing plants to create miniature gardens. On the interior walls, a mixture of clay and straw beneath a final layer of smooth clay would provide insulation and block moisture. On south-facing walls, windows made of soy-based plastics would absorb warmth in the winter; ground-floor windows on the shady side could draw in cool breezes during hot months. Water collected on the roof would flow through the house for use by people and plants; waste water would be purified in an outdoor pond with bacteria, fish, and plants that consume organic waste.

This is where I want to plant my roots. Love to MIT. (via)