Gimme some current

Ars Technica: Electrical current to the brain can get people to think different

What does it take to think different? Changes in the activity of the anterior temporal lobes, if a new study has it right. Thinking the same is actually very useful, since we can use existing mental frameworks to rapidly solve typical problems. But, on occasion, we’re faced with an atypical problem, one where our past problem solving techniques don’t apply, and we need to think of a new way of doing things. At those moments, applying a small electric current to the temporal lobes might just do the trick.

Although having a toolbox of problem-solving techniques can be very valuable, the authors describe how it can make us a prisoner of our past experience. When faced with a simple task, we sometimes keep trying to use one of our existing tools, even if it’s the wrong one for the job.

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Innovation

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I AM A MAN

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From a Swann Galleries auction in 2010:

very rare. An original poster from the sanitation workers’ strike that drew Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, Tennessee the first week of April 1968. This poster and one other, “Honor King, End Racism” were carried by the sanitation workers. Later that week, as King walked out onto the terrace at his motel, he was cut down by a shot purportedly fired by James Earl Ray.

via Still Life

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Image

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Research In Motion, In Perspective

I’ve read articles in the tech news about RIM has a long history of creating great business software and devices – specifically the famous Blackberry messaging devices and smartphones.
The thing is, these last few years for RIM haven’t been good and they’ve just slashed their outlook for Q1 2011.
I’m not sure why RIM doing poorly should be the slightest bit surprising. From a user interface perspective there hasn’t been any breakthoughs. I’ve used my wife’s Blackberry enough to know how stiff and devoid elegance it really is. Yes, the home screen has some unique iconography, but once you get into the email program – the Blackberry’s bread and butter – it’s like taking a time warp back to the 90’s.
Just to put it in perspective, when RIM was winning, this was the smartphone competition:
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Just sayin’.

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Human Experience

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more than a photo but less than a video

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If you’re an image junkie like me, this means you’ve known about FFFFOUND! for a while and you regularly follow Tumblr and Posterous blogs, or you have one of your own.

This also means you know the animated GIF.

Like it’s more technologically advanced cousin, Flash, the animated GIF started off life getting a bad reputation for being the driving force behind obnoxious, animated banner ads. Like Flash though, the animated GIF was discovered by artists and designers as being capable of much more than selling stuff.

animatedGIF_girlBopping.gif Co.Design has a great post on the work of Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.

They call their animated GIFs ‘cinemagraphs’ which are, in their words, “something more than a photo but less than a video.”

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Another great source of cinegraphs is, if we don’t, remember me.

Like the work of Beck and Burg, the slivers of cinema on IWDRM aren’t just sequences exported from the films. If you look closely at the GIFs, only one element has been isolated and animated, giving them a completely different feeling than many GIFs that feature excepts from films. I discovered IWDRM last year and I’ve been collecting their GIFs ever since.

Here’s one from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

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And another one from The Shining:

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Perhaps this GIF renaissance has to do with that fact that we’re all moving onto mobile devices like iPhones, iPads where Flash was never designed to work well and thus, has been banished. And if it hasn’t been banished it doesn’t work well.

While expression, storytelling and animation are possible now with the emergence of HTML5 and advanced Javascript classes and frameworks, there’s something beautifully simple about the animated GIF. It requires no plug-in and works as good now as it did 14 years ago when it was conceived.

It’s an autonomous nugget of awesomeness.

An airstream camper of expression.

Categories:

Art

Full Metal Jacket Diary

Matthew Modine’s “Full Metal Jacket Diary” – iPad App
From the producer of the app, Adam Rackoff:

In 2010, I approached Matthew about turning his diary into an “eBook.” We talked at length about the experience of reading on electronic devices and started to imagine something more cinematic and interactive. We wanted to take the reader on a unique journey; one they couldn’t get on an Amazon Kindle or other eReader. We realized then, that Apple’s new iPad was the perfect platform to re-release his book as an “app.” Matthew gave me his blessing and entrusted me with the contents of his book. After 8 months of pre-production work, I’m ready to begin creating what will become the Full Metal Jacket Diary iPad App. I plan to build an immersive experience that includes not only Modine’s diary and photographs, but audio of Matthew reading his book, sound effects, original music, and never-before-seen images and content! As with the book, it’s very important to us both that we create something Kubrick would have been proud of and wanted to own.

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via Daring Fireball

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Art

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Beauty In A Transitory Period

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This is a case for your iPad.
“Well, why don’t you just get a MacBook Air? It’s practically the same thing.”
I understand this perspective, but I still thing what the people at ZAGG have created is simple, beautiful and purposeful. In the evolution of computers, we’re currently in the transitory period from desktop to mobile. As is the case with evolution, not everyone will survive and that’s OK.
We’re still figuring everything out.
And making some beautiful mutant solutions while we’re at it.
via Co.Design

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Materials

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